AUBURN – Tuesday’s girls’ lacrosse game at Central Maine Community College essentially was Edward Little’s state championship game and a tune-up for Lewiston’s equivalent 24 hours later.

Maybe the final score reflected that.

Less than a month after getting routed by its rival on the artificial turf at Bates College, EL pushed Lewiston to the brink of a colossal upset before Shelby Turcotte’s goal with 1:31 remaining in regulation rescued the Blue Devils, 7-6.

“That’s not exactly what we were expecting,” confessed co-captain Turcotte, who finished with three goals and two assists. “We can’t go into it thinking the way we were.”

Lewiston (5-6) expected to score early and often and get in a workout prior to today’s home regular-season finale against powerful Brunswick, a game the Devils must win to make the Eastern Class A playoffs.

Instead, the Red Eddies (2-10) threw all their youthful exuberance into what was guaranteed to be their last contest of the spring and played one to grow on.

“We have 12 freshmen on this team who never played before out of 24. Half of our kids had never picked up a stick before this year, and they did amazing,” said EL coach Jessica Somers, who led the team along with veteran field hockey coach Greg Perkins. “(It was) their drive, their want, their intensity. Once they started picking up the skills during the season, the confidence came with it.”

EL led 3-0 before the Devils scored five unanswered goals in less than 10 minutes of clock time bridging the halves. Turcotte and Kirby Rodrigue each connected twice in a sequence that seemed to hasten a return to normalcy.

After an exchange of goals, the undaunted Red Eddies pulled even on a free shot from Alicia Large with 9:25 remaining and a steal and transition goal by Sam Dean with 6:36 to play.

Tori Couture, Jess Campbell and Karen Leary played tireless defense down the stretch for the Eddies, breaking up most of Lewiston’s attempts to break the tie.

“I think we came into this game expecting too much. Or with their heads too high, maybe in the clouds. It took too long to get the girls fired up and get their shots on the cage,” said Lewiston coach Christy Gardner. “We were supposed to play much better against them the first game, and we won by quite a bit, but this was supposed to be even bigger and it wasn’t.”

Turcotte finally cashed in Olivia Fournier’s feed from behind the net to put the Devils over the top.

Lewiston defender Kelsey Cote captured a ground ball to end EL’s ensuing possession. Cote successfully eluded the Eddies’ defense to drain most of the final minute from the clock.

Large scored the first two of her three goals in a 31-second span of the first half, ensuring that the Eddies would be in it for the long haul. Rodrigue emerged from a Lewiston timeout to make it 3-1 with 4:12 left and trigger the game-changing rally.

“The timeout helped a lot. Coach just made us realize we had to step it up a lot. We weren’t playing like we could,” Turcotte said. “First people were just shooting straight at the goalie (Liz Barclay). We were hitting her flat in the chest. We started looking to people more, looking for open passes more and cutting.”

Kayla Hamel and Kristen Lacasse each added a goal for Lewiston. Stephanie Belanger made nine saves.

Barclay, one of only three EL seniors, stopped 10 shots. Campbell and Katie Williamson provided support with a goal apiece.

“We won two games but we had a couple close ones. We started to mesh better as a team halfway through. They started getting confidence in each other, playing well together, knowing they could do it,” Somers said. “It was a very nice building year.”

Lewiston is riddled by injuries that forced Turcotte and Rodrigue, among others, to miss practice Monday. And now the Devils face a tall order at 5:15 p.m. today against the defending regional champions. Brunswick eliminated Lewiston in last year’s semfiinals.

“It is a playoff game for us I guess. That’s a good way of putting it,” Gardner said. “We might use that with the kids.”