AUGUSTA — If it hadn’t been the case already, it certainly is now: Come playoff time, the Lawrence football team has the Cony Rams’ number.

The Bulldogs had already knocked out the Rams twice in three seasons entering Friday night’s Class B North semifinal game at Fuller Field. This time, like the previous two, a more physical Lawrence team prevailed as it topped Cony 28-18 to advance to next week’s regional final against No. 1 Falmouth.

“It’s just practice; we work really hard down in the valley, and it really translates to the field,” said Lawrence senior Colton Carter. “These guys are a great team, and it’s nice to come out here and win against a team like that.”

Lawrence racked up 280 yards on the ground with Carter rushing 22 times for 144 yards and a touchdown. Parker Morin completed 15 of 36 passes for 197 yards and a touchdown for Cony, which also got 20 carries for 129 yards and a score from Anderson Noyes.

After both teams stalled on their opening drives, No. 3 Lawrence (7-3) scored on a 34-yard Preston Roy run with 4:36 left in the first quarter. Cony then got a 56-yard pass from Morin to Ethan Demmons to reach the red zone, and two plays later, an 8-yard run from Noyes made it 7-6 Lawrence following a failed 2-point try.

Lawrence answered back as Michael Hamlin hit Leighton Bradford for a 32-yard touchdown pass with 9:36 remaining in the half. The Bulldogs then forced a turnover on downs near midfield, and six plays later, Carter scored on a 27-yard run to make it 21-6 Bulldogs and mark the final points of the half.

“Michael has a nice touch on the ball, and I think that’s in a nutshell what our pass game is: Keeping people off-balance so that we can make those big plays,” Lawrence head coach John Hersom said of Hamlin, who was 3 of 5 with two touchdown passes. “He made some throws, and (Colton) had some tough runs.”

The first drive of the second half ended controversially when Lawrence stripped and recovered a fumble after Cony coaches felt Demmons’ forward progress had been stopped. The Bulldogs failed to capitalize, but on the next possession, they forced another fumble, this one by Noyes, and pounced on it again.

“They were starting to get some momentum in that third quarter by some big chunks of yards running it, so those were big,” Hersom said. “I think we’re really getting better on the defensive side, and some of that is due to the kids working hard and learning our system. They really came through tonight.”

Lawrence went up three scores after the second fumble as Hamlin threw a 13-yard touchdown to Bradford with 8:04 to go. An 8-yard pass from Morin to Cooper Clark with 7:35 to go and a 7-yard Morin touchdown run with 33 seconds left proved too little for Cony as the Bulldogs advanced to a second straight regional final.

Cony’s offense did have its moments, racking up 397 total yards to Lawrence’s 332. Yet unlike in the Rams’ 42-21 victory over the Bulldogs back in Week 2, Cony struggled to finish drives in this one as it turned the ball over on downs three times in Lawrence territory in addition to the two turnovers.

Cony head coach B.L. Lippert also felt that his team had been overwhelmed physically. Lawrence’s offensive line created some big holes for its running backs, and even when those backs were wrapped up, they frequently broke tackles to turn what looked to be moderate gains into big yardage.

“At the end of day, the more physical team won again,” Lippert said. “I just told our team that if we want to take another step and win it all next year, we’ve got to be in the weight room all the time. That’s what this program’s been built on, and we’ve had decent participation but not enough.”

The Bulldogs will look to defend their regional title against Falmouth in a neutral-site game that may very well end up being back at Fuller Field. To repeat, Hersom knows his team will have to be better on both sides of the ball than it was in a 48-3 road drubbing against Falmouth three weeks ago.

“We have to be able to run the ball like we have these past few weeks since then,” Hersom said. “That’s the strength of our team, and we need to be able to do that and stop them from getting the big plays. We’ll be opportunistic as much as we can, hopefully.”