AUBURN – Edward Little coach Darren Hartley says he’s run all the numbers and scenarios through his mind.

The first set of numbers he recites make him sound like the Bill James of football. The scenarios he concludes with make him sound like a Las Vegas oddsmaker.

“The odds say Lewiston’s got to win this football game,” Hartley said. “You know, you don’t beat a good team twice in the same year, there is no true home field advantage …”

The first time Edward Little and Lewiston met two weeks ago, the numbers were virtually even, except where it mattered most. The Red Eddies’ 19-12 win snapped a five-game losing streak to their rivals and guaranteed this game would be played at the scene of their last playoff meeting, in the 2002 Pine Tree Conference championship, Walton Field (3 p.m. kickoff). Each team stands in the other’s way for their first conference title game since that epic battle, which EL won.

Both teams are 8-1 and coming off nail-biting quarterfinal victories. Nerves would be frayed regardless of what team awaited them in the semifinals, but when that opponent is an ancient rival (Lewiston leads the all-time series, 87-65-12), getting too jacked up for Saturday afternoon has to be as much of a concern as the wet weather forecast.

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’ve kind of stopped trying to figure out where kids are psychologically,” Lewiston coach Bill County said. “But quite honestly, we were a little bit too excited against the Eddies two weeks ago, and yet we were very business-like during the week. We’ve talked a lot about that – just play the game the way you’ve played it all year long. Try not to get too excited and you’re going to be okay.”

Lewiston’s nerves were evident early in the first meeting. The Blue Devils fumbled the opening kickoff, then had the ball deep in EL territory on their first three possessions and failed to come away with any points.

“Defensively, I was fairly pleased with the way we played,” County said. “Offensively, I was disappointed with our production. I think that we have the weapons to score. We have to gain some consistency offensively.”

Edward Little’s offense finally got on schedule by having Buddy Foss, Dylon Therrien and Brandon Vye run the ball for 10 straight plays on their last drive of the first half. Cody Goddard, the PTC’s leading passer, broke the scoreless tie with a six-yard TD pass to Shane Ciriello, and the Eddies never looked back.

EL’s veteran offensive line, led by Grady Burns, Bruce Gerry and Matt Saucier, controlled the line of scrimmage from the second quarter on, giving Goddard time to set himself in the pocket. In the second half, the senior QB found his rhythm and his wide array of weapons, which includes Ciriello, Donovan Bailey, Sean Daigle and Therrien out of the backfield. He ended the day with the first three scoring passes by a Lewiston opponent on the season.

Lewiston QB Ronnie Turner matched Goddard virtually yard for yard in the final passing numbers, but the junior was sacked five times and hurried on several other occasions by the Eddies’ pass rush, which was led by Therrien, Gerry and Travis Ouellette.

Even though they have big play-makers such as Chuck Faletra and Tyler Lussier in their passing game, the Blue Devils would probably like to avoid an aerial game of tit-for-tat this time. That means getting the ball to Wesley Myers, the PTC’s second-leading rusher, more. Myers was banged up and carried the ball just 16 times (for 112 yards) the last game. His workload against Bangor last week (20 carries, 106 yards) was also below his season average of 24 rushes per game. Myers may match his total workload of the last two games on Saturday.

“I think we’ve got to find a rhythm,” County said. “I think we had a hard time getting into a rhythm two weeks ago. I felt like we had things going on a couple of drives and then something would happen and get us off-schedule.”

While Hartley expects to see more of Myers, he doesn’t want his defense keying exclusively on the shifty senior tailback.

“I think Lewiston’s really going to try to hurt us off the supplements of what Wes does,” Hartley said. “Once Wes starts bending and bouncing and twisting and gets into his game, then Bill will just hammer that until he thinks it’s right on the precipice of … and then I think they’ll try to attack us with something supplemental to it.”

That could be Turner, who had a 22-yard touchdown against Bangor, keeping the ball on the option or sophomore Jeff Keene running some misdirection.

The winner of this “Battle of the Bridge” will meet whoever emerges from Friday night’s game between top-seeded and unbeaten Lawrence and No. 4 Skowhegan for the conference championship.