AUBURN – Giving up seven runs in an inning, or matching it. Allowing its opponent the luxury of fourth and fifth outs, or taking advantage of the same generosity.

Edward Little High School has seen it all in an admittedly bizarre baseball season, so nothing that transpired at the Auburn Suburban Little League complex Thursday surprised the Red Eddies.

Down five runs after watching Brunswick score seven in the top of the fourth inning, EL matched that lucky digit on the scoreboard in the home half of the fifth.

Thanks to a Houdini act by closer Cody Goddard – coaxing a comebacker to the mound after loading the bases in the seventh – it was enough to secure No. 2 EL a 9-7 Eastern Class A quarterfinal victory.

“We’ve done this all year. We give them four outs instead of three, and it costs us a lot of runs,” Goddard said. “We’ve come back before. We’ve just got a lot of good bats.”

EL (13-4) sent a dozen hitters to the plate in the fifth. Brunswick (12-6) committed four of its staggering seven errors in that frame.

Shane Ciriello and Ryan Arnold each reached base on booted, potential double-play grounders to ignite the inning. Goddard and Mat Gordon each slapped an RBI single against starting pitcher Stephen Carter.

Reliever Aiden Gaughran plunked the first batter he faced, Logan Rossignol, before issuing a bases-loaded walk to freshman pinch hitter Josh DeLong.

That made it 7-6. Gaughran briefly stopped the bleeding by striking out Josh Mains before Kenzie Souders’ opposite-field single plated Gordon and Rossignol with the tying and go-ahead runs.

DeLong scored all the way from first and cleared the bases after the ball skipped through the right fielder’s wickets.

“I was hitting pretty bad. My confidence was pretty low. I’ve had some pretty bad games recently. I think I’ll be OK the next game now,” said Souders. “We’ve had games like this before. Being down five runs or whatever it was, we knew we could come back easily.”

Devin Flynn pitched 2 1/3 innings of steady relief to hold the Dragons in check after the explosive fourth.

That inning included three walks and a throwing error around a three-run blast by Jack Faherty.

“We had our chances. We could have put some more on at the time,” said Brunswick coach Peter Blake. “I think we had the bases loaded. We had a chance to open it up.”

Flynn fanned Faherty in his second at-bat of the inning to strand Kevin Wilson at second and Matt Liscovitz at third.

Faherty led off the seventh with a single against Goddard, who coaxed two fly outs before a single by Sam Guerrette and a four-pitch walk to Adam Totman loaded the bases.

“In warmups I felt really good, and then I came out and was just barely missing my spots. It made it interesting at the end,” Goddard said.

Goddard stabbed John Simmons’ one-hopper, flipped to Arnold at first and punctuated the game with a triumphant shake of the fist.

Rossignol produced EL’s first run with an RBI single in the second. Goddard’s double and a wild pitch set up Ciriello’s sacrifice fly to make it 2-0 in the third.

Gordon and Rossignol were a combined 5-for-7 from the No. 7 and No. 8 slots in the EL order.

The Eddies will host No. 3 Cony in the semifinals at noon Saturday at Pettingill Park.

“It’s so easy to quit. Everything we see around as all the time, everybody wants to take the path of least resistance. Obviously we didn’t chart it up like this today,” said EL coach Darren Hartley. “We kicked the ball around. We’re going to play a couple of innings where we give up four outs. We’ve done it all year. But as far as raking the baseball, we got a couple of kicks, and we take that because maybe what goes around comes around.”