ALEDO, Ill. - Chalk one up for the chalkboard.

Coach Nat Zunkel's pre-game message to his Mercer County Golden Eagles wasn't just succinct. It was prescient.

The board said their first-round Illinois Class 2A playoff battle vs. Bureau Valley would be fought over every yard. And 1 yard certainly mattered Saturday afternoon - the one that separated the Eagles from the end zone with less than 25 ticks to play.

With his offensive line pushing in front of him and fullback Ethan Ball pushing from behind, senior quarterback Brett Anderson covered that distance on second-and-goal to complete a 60-yard, 1-minute, 40-second march to a 22-19 victory.

"We wanted it real bad," senior captain Ball said of that last yard. "Every hill we had ever ran, every bench press we had lifted, it came down to that one play, and we knew it."

The win earned the Golden Eagles a second-round date with 9-1, second-seeded Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley next Saturday.

The quarterback sneak ended an entertaining struggle between a pair of 7-2 teams who did indeed battle for every yard on a sloppy field owned by both defenses.

Mercer County managed 192 yards of offense before the game-winning drive and only 80 of that via its running game. The visiting Storm finished the contest with 163 yards of total offense.

Both teams had hurt themselves with mistakes. The Storm lost a pair of fumbles and were flagged 11 times for 92 yards.

Mercer County was 2-for-5 on critical fourth-down attempts, with one of the conversions producing a sensational, diving 9-yard touchdown grab by Ball, and the other ending ugly on a fumble lost at the BV 3 after a 28-yard pass completion.

But the Golden Eagles knew the outcome rode on the arm of veteran senior quarterback Anderson when they huddled up with 2:07 remaining, 60 yards from the touchdown they needed to overcome a 19-14 deficit.

"We looked at each other, and some guys had tears in their eyes," Ball reported. "This is the situation we waited four years for, ever since we started playing football. We had a chance to win it and we did."

Anderson said the team was confident because they had practice that 2-minute drill "a million times."

In practice, he said, "We have to score three times before we can go home."

Anderson started the drive by overthrowing a wide-open, touchdown-bound Kyle Pittman but made amends by covering 48 of the 60 yards with four pass completions, then getting another six on a QB draw and finally bulling over for that final yard.

He finished with 13 completions on 33 throws for 165 yards and a score and also ran for 45 yards. Ball managed 17 yards on nine carries but was a key target, reeling in five catches for 84 yards.