<p><strong>C</strong>enter Grove football coach Eric Moore was stressed out all day worrying about crazy things happening on Friday the 13th, but it was visiting Warren Central that wound up feeling like it was living out a horror movie during Friday’s Class 6A regional showdown.</p><p>Moore, who called himself the “most superstitious person alive” after the Trojans’ convincing 38-0 victory, had nothing to worry about after another dominating effort from his top-ranked squad, which got 181 yards rushing from senior Carson Steele and 113 more from junior Daniel Weems along with the usual lights-out performance from the state’s best defense, which posted its fifth shutout of the season.</p><p>The Trojans (12-0), who went 8-0 at home for the first time in school history, will travel to face another MIC rival, Ben Davis, in a semistate game next Friday night. The Giants held off Carmel, 27-21, in the other southern regional game.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>“Twelve wins is hard; 12 in a row is even harder,” Moore said after claiming his third straight regional title and 14th in 21 seasons. “I ain’t going to lie — last year was much easier because no one cared about us, and you just start slipping through.”</p><p>Nothing looked very hard in this one.</p><p>Warren Central (4-6) gave Center Grove one of its tougher games in the regular season, holding the Trojans to a season-low three first-half points in a 20-0 game on Aug. 28, and the expectation was that the Warriors would present a similar challenge this time around, especially after emerging from arguably the toughest sectional draw in Class 6A. But they didn’t hold up quite as well in the rematch.</p><p>Center Grove wasted little time getting on the board, with Weems breaking free for a 52-yard touchdown run on the fifth play from scrimmage. After a Warren Central punt, the Trojans put together a more methodical 10-play drive, capped off when junior defensive lineman Caden Curry took his first handoff of the season and bulled his way in for a 4-yard score with 3:25 left in the first quarter.</p><p>“We’re just trying to mix things up as we go,” Moore said of getting the ball to Curry.</p><p>The next Trojan possession ended in a turnover on downs at the Warriors’ 2-yard line, but the Trojan defense then forced a fumble and recovered inside the 1, setting up a Steele TD run that was followed by a two-point conversion sweep by senior Connor Delp. Steele, who gained 155 yards on the ground before halftime, added a 6-yard touchdown rush with 3:01 left in the half to stretch the lead to 29-0 going into the break.</p><p>Center Grove finished with 362 yards rushing, with Steele accounting for exactly half of those in what was the final home game of his memorable career.</p><p>In the third quarter, Steele then got the running clock going with a 24-yard touchdown run and junior Austin Booker followed up by blocking a Warrior punt out of the back of the end zone with a safety. The benches emptied soon after, with the clocking down to zero on a scoreless fourth quarter well before 9 o’clock.</p><p>Curry collected seven tackles, including a sack, to lead the defense, while Mitchell Evans Delp pulled in three catches for 55 yards, including a 38-yard reception during the second quarter, to get up to 754 receiving yards on the year. That breaks the single-season school record of 738 that Dan Thompson had owned since 1988.</p><p>Overall, it was a pretty thorough beatdown from the opening kickoff, as the Trojans quickly eliminated any concerns their superstitious coach might have had.</p><p>“I knew we had to get things going,” Moore said. “We’re a really good first-quarter team, and the only times we’ve struggled is when we don’t get out of the gate in the first quarter. If we get out of the gate in the first quarter, we’re tough to hang with, because our defense is so good. Now we’re putting you in a situation where you’ve got to do what we want you to do.”</p>
