FARMINGTON — While fifth-seeded Brunswick was winning its fair share of one-run and extra-inning games this season, No. 4 Mt. Blue was cobbling together a strong campaign of its own, thanks in part to its execution of the suicide squeeze.

Unfortunately for the Cougars, only one of those trends continued into Wednesday’s Eastern Class A quarterfinal matchup.

Zach Lavoie’s sacrifice fly drove home the winning run in the eighth inning as Brunswick held off Mt. Blue, 5-4, at Hippach Field. The Dragons advance to the semifinals, where they will meet the winner of Thursday’s quarterfinal between No. 8 Hampden Academy and No. 1 Lewiston.

“We’re 4-1 in extra innings. We’re a clutch team,” Brunswick pitcher Luke Carter said. “We’ve had a bunch of those close wins.”

Mt. Blue (11-6) rallied from a 4-1 deficit with two runs in the sixth and an RBI single by Cam Abbott in the seventh against Carter.

With Abbott at first and Blake Hart at third and one out, the Cougars attempted a suicide squeeze on an 0-1 count. Clint Lowe was unable to make contact on a pitch away, however, and Lavoie, Brunswick’s catcher, tagged out Hart, who was breaking for home on the pitch, about 10 feet up the third base line.

Carter struck out Lowe swinging to send the game into extra innings.

“We’ve done it about six or seven times this year and we were six-for-six or seven-for-seven,” Mt. Blue coach Dan Stefanilo said. “Looking back, one out, maybe we get it done a different way, but that’s all I’ve got on that one.”

“That caught me completely off-guard, it scared the crap out of me, to be quite honest,” said Brunswick coach Bill Ridge, who was teammates with Stefanilo on the University of Maine at Farmington baseball team as recently as 2008. “We happened to get lucky and threw a pitch up and out, so even if he got the bat on it, he probably wasn’t going to put it in fair territory. I thought that was a good call actually in the situation. It caught us off-guard. If he gets that down, they win.”

Kyle Franklin started Brunswick’s winning rally with a leadoff single off reliever Bradley Jackson, moved to second on a ground out to short, to third on a wild pitch and scored when Abbott’s throw from left field on Lavoie’s fly ball went up the third base line.

Carter and Mt. Blue starter Jimmy Neal each gave up an unearned run to put the score at 1-1 entering the fifth inning.

Brunswick loaded the bases in the fifth on a walk, single and intentional walk to bring up Carter with one out. He laced a 2-0 pitch through the drawn-in infield between third and short to make it 3-1 Dragons.

“I wanted those RBI’s. We needed those,” Carter said. “It got me a little cushion, but I had to keep it interesting.”

Carter got a three-run cushion thanks to Max Roberts’ RBI single in the sixth. The Brunswick lefty worked efficiently through the first five innings, throwing just 61 pitches while yielding only one hit.

“He was locating his fastball really well, keeping his curveball down low, and it wasn’t really until they came around for their third and fourth times up that they started catching on to what he was trying to do,” said Ridge, whose team improved to 7-3 in one-run games and 4-1 in extra innings. “But he did a great job battling through that third time through the order.”

The Cougars finally got the measure of Carter on their third trip to the plate. Lowe and Dylan Vining led off the bottom of the sixth with singles and scored on ground balls by Neal and Andrew Pratt, respectively.

Nick Hilton started things for the Cougars in the seventh by hitting a ball off home plate and reaching when Lavoie’s throw sailed high and pulled the first baseman off the bag.

After a sacrifice moved Hilton to second, Hart hit a flare that dropped in front of the charging right fielder and hustled into second to put the potential winning run in scoring position. Abbott laced a single up the middle to score Hilton, but Hart had to be held up at third, setting up the suicidal squeeze.

Mt. Blue got the tying run into scoring position again with one out in the eighth, but reliever Alex Emery got Pratt to pop out to second and Jackson to ground out to third to end it.