Central High football is complete: talent, depth, discipline, 6-0 record and a newly anointed Central Section No. 1 ranking.

Better, the Grizzlies have a coach who knows how to manage it all.

"Don't touch the cheese," Justin Garza warns his players this week, "or you'll get trapped."

It's a clever ploy by a rising star in the section's coaching fraternity.

Garza, playing his every marker entering today's 7 p.m. Tri-River Athletic Conference home game with No. 3 Clovis (5-1), has gone so far as to make about 100 small photo copies of five mice getting snapped en masse while munching on cheese in a trap.

Atop the picture reads: "DON'T TOUCH THE CHEESE!!!"

Beneath it reads: "GO GRIZZ -- BEAT CLOVIS!!!"

The Central players have carried the photos with them this week entering one of the biggest games in school history.

"I give them a visual," Garza says. "The second you eat the cheese, it's over."

Meaning: Don't get trapped by the No. 1 ranking and overconfidence that can accompany it, particularly against Clovis, which blew the doors off Central's aspirations last season with a 21-7, 26-0 sweep.

"That's still in back of the kids' heads," says Garza, who came from Sunnyside to replace Casey Quinn this season. "This Clovis team really stopped them and all the things they wanted to do. Our kids have a lot of respect for Clovis."

The Cougars have done what Central hasn't -- eight times.

That represents the number of Clovis section football titles, ranging from 1970 to 2002.

Eighty-three years of football at Central and nary a section crown, not even a 10-win season.

The Grizzlies have won nine games three times (1972, '89, 2002), says section historian Bob Barnett.

But all that matters tonight for a Central team also ranked 18th in the state is win No. 7.

"We're ready to go," says Darian Smith, a 6-foot-7, 300-pound offensive tackle.

Asked what separates this team from one that shared last year's TRAC title with Clovis and finished 8-3, he says: "We're more determined, way more disciplined. We're tenacious and enthusiastic about where we are and where we're going."

Oh, Smith adds: "We have a lot of talent, too."

Not to suggest last year's team didn't. It, too, was loaded, featuring one of the leading passers in section history in Mike Baker.

He's gone, but junior Eric Jimenez has been efficient, if not spectacular, while directing a pistol attack that Garza has carried with him from Reedley to Sunnyside to Central.

No need to be spectacular with Michiah Quick as a teammate.

Only a junior, he's averaging 11.3 yards per rush, 15.8 yards per reception and 30 yards per punt return and has raced 98 yards with a kickoff return as well.

"It's amazing to watch him run away from people," Garza says. "When I'm at the end of my coaching career, I'll look back on guys like that; they don't come around very often."

Quick has help aplenty on a team promoted to No. 1 following Bakersfield's 28-17 loss to Liberty-Bakersfield last week.

Nick Wilson is coming off a 259-yard, four-TD rushing effort in a 50-22 rout of Buchanan. Smith and guard Sharif Williams (6-3, 295) blow up the left side.

Additional mountains come in the form of Tashon Smallwood (6-2, 290) and Jordan Hastin (6-1, 306) on the defensive line.

Tramell Johnson, a turnover-causing, big-time striker, has been exceptional at middle linebacker.

And then, on a team with six legitimate major college prospects, there are the Nos. 1-2-3-4-5 dynamite dudes patrolling the secondary. That's the jersey numbers of Johnny Johnson, L.J. Moore, Devon Brewer, Quick and Oklahoma commit Hatari Byrd.

So why not the top ranking?

"I'm glad we're No. 1. We've worked hard for it," Smith says. "It's where we belong."