Warren Central put on a dominating performance Friday night in rolling over the Murrah Mustangs 42-0.

Although they played on a short field for most of the night, the Vikings (5-3, 2-2 Region 2-6A) scored on six of their seven first-half possessions with a stable of running backs touching the ball and an effective passing game rolling up the yards and points.

Five different players scored the team’s six touchdowns.

“We knew coming in we had to be as sharp as we could,” Warren Central coach Josh Morgan said. “I thought our guys did that and we came out and played pretty clean. Our defense was pretty dominant and the offense, other than one or two series, really controlled the game.”

Warren Central scored first when Malik Sims scooped up a fumble and returned it 10 yards to the end zone. The Vikings added another score with 2:55 to play in the opening quarter when running back Corey Wilson scored on a 10-yard run. That capped a 46-yard drive that saw Wilson carry the ball on all four plays. The drive was set up by Murrah’s second fumble of the quarter.

The Vikings then went 57 yards in eight plays on their next possession, with Jerry Stovall scoring from a yard out to push the lead to 21-0 with 10:03 left in the half.

A short punt set the Vikings up at the Murrah 43 and it didn’t take long to tack on another score. A 26-yard pass from F.J. Barnum to Damond Patton on a slant put them at the Mustangs’ 17. On the next play, Barnum hit Colin Standish for the score to make it 28-0 with 7:14 remaining.

Lamar Gray’s 2-yard run capped a four-play, 48-yard drive that included a 39-yard completion from Barnum to P.J. Mims. With 4:53 to play in the half, the Vikings led 35-0.

Just before the half ended, the Vikings scored once more with Gray bulling his way in from 4 yards out with under a minute to play in the second. Hank Holdiness added his sixth PAT to make it 42-0.
Murrah had its best drive of the night in the third quarter, reaching the Warren Central 10-yard line. But a couple of bad snaps pushed them back to the 35 and they failed to score.

The Vikings had eight different ball carriers tote the football for a team total of 251 rushing yards. Stovall led the way with 86 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. Wilson had 46 yards on just four carries, while Gray finished with 39 yards and a pair of scores on five carries. Sims had 38 yards on three carries.

Barnum finished the night 5-of-8 passing for 101 yards and a touchdown. Mims led the receiving corps with a pair of catches for 43 yards, while Patton also had two catches for 46 yards.

“Having a lot of guys touch the ball was the gameplan coming in,” Morgan said. “We tried to work some things down the field as well. Take some things they were giving us, but also set our guys up to make plays and see how they respond and I thought they did a good job.”

It was WC’s first shutout since a 23-0 win over Vicksburg in September 2015.