Slowly but surely, Warren Central had taken some chunks out of its huge halftime deficit against Starkville. Twenty-one points had become 14, and then 11, and the Vikings were about to take another big bite to make it four.

And then the football was on the ground.

Starkville’s Nelson Jordan flopped on it.

The Yellow Jackets marched 85 yards the other way for a touchdown of their own.

The bellowing crowd was instantly deflated, and not long afterward the juggernaut Starkville was heading home with the latest in a long line of victories, while Warren Central trudged on to next week and tried to find the bright side of things.

Starkville’s Montario Montgomery threw three first-half touchdown passes and Jordan’s fumble recovery near the goal line early in the fourth quarter allowed Starkville to beat Warren Central 28-10 Friday night at Viking Stadium.

“We did not play very good the first half. I’m really proud of our team the second half. That fumble on the goal line, if we don’t do that things are really fixing to get interesting,” Warren Central coach Josh Morgan said. “If we can score there, it’s 21-17 and I thought our crowd was fixing to get going. But it did not happen, and our first half was not good. You can’t do what we did the first half and expect to win the football game.”

Warren Central (8-2, 5-1 Region 2-6A) could have clinched its first region championship since 2004 with a victory, but had those hopes dashed. It can still finish second in the region and host a first-round playoff game if Starkville (9-1, 6-0) beats Clinton (7-3, 5-1) next Friday. Warren Central finishes the regular season at Callaway.

“We’ve had a great season and it’s still continuing on. We’re going to find a way to learn from this and continue to get better,” Morgan said. “Starkville is definitely one of the top teams in Mississippi, if not the top. So that’s the improvement that needs to be made. It’s better to happen now than later on, and we’re going to try to make adjustments and become better from it, just like we did after our first loss of the season.”

Warren Central came into Friday with an eight-game winning streak and tons of momentum, but quickly had it all go south with a poor first half.

The Vikings were penalized seven times for 84 yards — including a 15-yard facemask call that negated a turnover and kept a Starkville scoring drive alive — and had virtually no offense. Despite generating 124 yards, the Vikings only had three snaps inside Starkville territory in the first half.

Montgomery’s three touchdown passes —15-yarders to Rontavis Clark and Parker Lemm and a 27-yarder on fourth down to A.J. Brown — put Starkville ahead 21-0.

That changed in the third quarter, though. WC took the second half kickoff and marched 65 yards in 13 plays to get on the board. Demarcus Jones kept the drive alive with a short catch and run off a fake punt, and a personal foul call gave the Vikings another first down.

D.J. Knight eventually capped the drive with a 1-yard touchdown run. An interception on Starkville’s next series led to a 30-yard Nick Wright field goal to cut it to 21-10, and then the Vikings forced a punt and drove inside the Starkville 20 as the third quarter came to a close.

On second-and-goal from the 5-yard line, all of Warren Central’s momentum slammed head first into a brick wall.

Quarterback Jesse Wilson scrambled to his right, couldn’t find any receivers, and was sacked near the 10. As he was falling, the ball slipped out of his hand and Jordan recovered it.

Starkville embarked on a 12-play, 85-yard scoring drive capped off by Avery Brown’s 16-yard run that made it 28-10, and the outcome was decided with 5:49 still left on the clock.

“I was thinking touchdown, and it just slipped out,” said Wilson, who rushed for 50 yards on 16 carries.

Knight finished with 48 rushing yards on 18 carries for Warren Central, while Montgomery was 12-of-23 passing for 153 yards and the three touchdowns for Starkville. Avery Brown ran for 123 yards and one touchdown.

A.J. Brown, Starkville’s All-America wide receiver, finished with seven receptions for 63 yards — all in the first half. Other than the one touchdown, he was largely a non-factor as the Vikings held him to short receptions and not many yards after the catch.

“We did some things good, and I thought our game plan was good. We just weren’t really ourselves in the first half,” Morgan said.