The Gorham boys hadn’t forgotten that Portland came out on top when the soccer squads met at the end of September.

“We lost to these guys in the regular season,” said Rams midfielder Phil Reed, “but we felt that we were the better team. We came out here with something to prove.”

When the Bulldogs came to town Saturday for a western Class A quarterfinal, Reed and his teammates proved definitively who the better team was, eliminating Portland, 3-0.

“We haven’t been playing our best all year,” Gorham coach Tim King said, “so we were hoping to peak at the right time.”

The Rams (13-2-1) dominated the Bulldogs (10-4-2), pummeling the visitors’ defense with flurries that featured bursts of speed, smart passing and patience. Reed and fellow attackers Mark Schmidt, Isaac Pease and Patrick King kept the ball in the offensive end, repeatedly creating scoring chances.

“We were very composed today,” said King. “There were times when we could have taken a shot and we rolled passes through to somebody else.”

Portland’s only notable scoring attempt came 10 minutes into the game, when Gorham goalkeeper Will Pike (seven saves) came out a dozen yards to snatch a high, floating pass. The senior was bumped by an opponent while airborne and landed hard, but hung on to the ball.

Midway through the first, the Rams missed on several opportunities, including a play where Reed flipped the ball right over an opponents’ head, stepped around him and then fired a shot that went across the net and wide.

Then at the 22:26 mark, the left-footed Schmidt bent a corner kick from the right side past Bulldogs keeper Sam McAdam for a 1-0 lead. Gorham kept the pressure on, but still led by just a goal at the break.

That changed minutes into the second half, when Schmidt came down the left sideline with the ball and sent it across to Pease, who needed only to nudge it past Devon Merritt (who replaced McAdam at the half) for the score.

Six minutes later, the Rams made it look easy again, as Joel Mundy kicked the ball toward the goal just as a Reed got there to give it a final push into the net.

“I touched it just enough to get it to go in,” Reed said. “The goalie got wrong-footed and couldn’t get to it. (The goal) kind of sealed it. Three goals (down) is hard to come back from.”

Gorham continued to dominate play, and King was able to rest his starters for the final 10 minutes of the game.

“I think we just took it right to them today,” the coach said. “We didn’t give them a chance to get going at all.”

“I thought that our defense came to play,” said Schmidt, “and that was the biggest thing.”

Portland coach Rocco Frenzilli said that the rematch was a very different game from Portland’s 2-1 victory three weeks earlier.

“Obviously they had a game plan to take us out of what we tried to do up top,” Frenzilli said, “and whenever we did get anything they were very strong getting behind the ball.”

The third-ranked Rams are scheduled to take on number two seed Scarborough (13-1-1) on the road Wednesday.

“We have a talented group of kids,” King said, “and when they play to their abilities I think we can compete with anybody.”