Sometimes numbers–more than words, or even pictures–can tell a story best.

The Seawolves boast the top two rushers in the league in Miguel Maysonet and Brock Jackolski, who rushed for 2,157 yards together all year, an average of 102.5 and 93.5 yards per game respectively. They combined for 59 yards on Saturday.

How about the number 496? This was the number of yards accounted for by one man on the Liberty offense: quarterback Mike Brown.

But perhaps the most important number of all, when the final gun went off on Saturday and the Liberty Flames had defeated the Seawolves, 54-28, in the last game of the season, was 13. That was the number of points allowed that the Seawolves (6-5,5-1 Big South) missed the Football Championship Subdivision national championship playoffs by.

Heading into the game, Stony Brook had postseason football well within its grasp. Win, and the Seawolves would be undefeated in Big South play and have earned a conference championship outright and the playoff berth that came with it. Lose, and keep the opponent to less than 41 points, and the Seawolves would share the conference title and take the playoff spot for themselves.

When kickoff came about on Saturday in Lynchburg, Va., the horror show that followed made it seem as if Halloween had never ended, as the wheels went flying off the wagon of the Stony Brook football season, leaving the Seawolves to pinch themselves awake as their dreams of a postseason appearance turned into the nightmare before Thanksgiving.

The biggest monster under the Seawolves bed was redshirt junior quarterback Mike Brown. Brown didn’t give the Seawolves any rest, running for 160 yards and passing for another 334, a conference record for total yards. He found the end zone four times-twice on the ground and twice through the air.

For the Seawolves, the silver lining was a share of the second-straight Big South regular-season championship for Stony Brook. Last year, the Seawolves split the trophy with Liberty after they beat the Flames with a dramatic, last-minute touchdown that left both teams at 5-1.

This year, Stony Brook shares the trophy with Liberty and Coastal Carolina. All three teams finished with a 5-1 conference record. The conference champion of the Big South received for the first time this year a bid to the national championship playoffs. Because there is only a spot for one team, tie-breakers were required.

The first tie-breaker was head-to-head matchups. But the results were a tangled triangle that left no one clear winner–Stony Brook had beaten Coastal Carolina, while Coastal had beaten Liberty and Liberty defeated Stony Brook on Saturday. The next was points allowed. In this category, Stony Brook was far ahead going into the final frame, having allowed 68 points to Coastal Carolina’s 109 and Liberty’s 110. The Seawolves could lose and still go to the playoffs, as long as they did so by less than 41 points.

Liberty, determined to ruin Stony Brook’s bid for the playoffs, went about their business with lethal efficiency. Of 15 possessions for the Flames, they scored on 10, including every single second half possession before a fumble on the final Seawolves drive allowed Liberty to run out the clock.

The Seawolves only scored on four possessions–two touchdown runs by Maysonet and a pair of TD passes from quarterback Michael Coulter–keeping the ball for only just over 23 minutes. As a result, the defense never got a chance to catch its breath and Brown and company went to work, time and again running all over Stony Brook on the way to the end zone.

By the end of the third quarter, it had become apparent that the Seawolves would need to win the game and couldn’t rely on the points allowed tiebreak. However, the momentum was squarely in favor of the home side and the Stony Brook failed to score a single point in the final period.

This article has been updated. The original called Liberty QB Mike Brown by the surname Black after the first reference. The change is reflected above.