BEHIND THE SCENES: More to the Brad Brownell Story

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Terry Don Phillips and Bill D'Andrea had finished most of their interviews to replace Oliver Purnell and were pretty confident they'd found their guy in Brad Brownell.

And then Rick Stansbury walked through the door of a hotel room in Atlanta, changing almost everything.

Stansbury, then the coach of Mississippi State, turned on the charm and the salesmanship to such an extent that Phillips was virtually sold.

D'Andrea was a little skeptical.

"I told Terry Don he was a cross between Rick Barnes and Joel Osteen," D'Andrea recalled.

Coaching searches are funky, unpredictable endeavors that can turn on a dime -- or a candidate's powers of persuasion.

We seldom learn a great deal about these ultra-secretive endeavors in the moment, because schools spend a lot of time and money assuring that the tiniest bits of information don't leak out.

So it's an awful lot of fun now, eight years later, to reconstruct some of the details that led to Brownell becoming Clemson's coach in April of 2010.

First off, no one knows what would've happened had Stansbury been the guy. Maybe he succeeds and it's another notch in Phillips' glistening belt of successful hires. Maybe it crashes and burns.

This much is true: Phillips and D'Andrea were happy they parted ways with Stansbury after doing some homework on him and dealing with his agent.

And they're justifiably beaming about the man they settled on, with Brownell and the Tigers in the Round of 16 following Sunday's stunning destruction of Auburn.

Phillips once told Dabo Swinney they'd have to help each other pack up their offices if that audacious experiment didn't work out.

And there were times -- say, a year ago -- when it wasn't crazy to wonder about his Brownell hire.

But this splendid success in Brownell's eighth season makes everyone chuckle in wonder once again at Phillips' ability to identify coaches.

Les Miles. Mike Gundy. Purnell. Dabo. Brownell.

Amazing.

"Several years ago you wouldn't have thought this would have occurred," Phillips said. "But we've been down this road before.

"There was a time when a lot of people weren't happy with either of those two choices. Dabo and Brad have been through some tough times. But they have done a wonderful job. Both of them are excellent men. And we've all been around them enough to know what kind of quality they have as individuals."

Before we get back to the Stansbury part, we have to cover the Purnell part. After Phillips hired him from Dayton in 2003 to replace Larry Shyatt, Purnell methodically built a brand and a product that fans couldn't get enough of.

This place was in love with Purnell after the Tigers knocked off Duke in the 2008 ACC Tournament semifinal. Even after Clemson lost to 12 seed Villanova in the first round of the NCAAs the next week, it wasn't that big a deal because the Tigers had broken new ground and were a power for one of the few times in their history.

But then the Tigers went one-and-done again the next year to lower-seeded Michigan. And again the next year to lower-seeded Missouri.

At this point everyone at Clemson had gotten a little spoiled. There's nothing wrong with desiring more, but Purnell was probably getting too much heat for the one-and-done thing. That seems obvious now but was plenty arguable at the time, when a period of rich success overshadowed traditional reality.

People were saying his running, pressing system wasn't conducive to advancing through the NCAA Tournament, forgetting a fairly important fact that it was conducive to getting to the NCAA Tournament.

D'Andrea, who was Phillips' right-hand man as senior associate AD, remembers Purnell letting his name be floated for a job or two around that time. The thought was that he was looking for a raise.

"He did want a little more money," D'Andrea said. "I told Terry Don: 'He could go to another school. We might pay him what he wants."

Phillips maintained then, and does to this day, that he was given no opportunity to sway Purnell from DePaul. He was making $1.6 million at Clemson. He left to make $2.27 million at DePaul.

"When Oliver went to DePaul to visit with them, he did not make me aware of it," Phillips said. "And then he accepted the job at DePaul. I'll put it this way: I was extremely disappointed with how Oliver handled it. He went there without having a meeting with me.

"And I will say this: Oliver was always very fairly compensated."

The abrupt departure, coupled with the habit for one-and-done NCAA exits, left most Clemson fans less than shattered about having to find a new coach. The thinking at the time was that Clemson just needed to find a system that could hold up better during March Madness. As if reaching March Madness was the baseline.

Brownell, who'd spent four seasons as head coach at Wright State, was speaking their language during an interview at a Charlotte hotel. Phillips and D'Andrea also interviewed Boston College's Al Skinner, Old Dominion's Blaine Taylor, Wofford's Mike Young, Jacksonville University's Cliff Warren, and Purnell assistant Ron Bradley.

Brownell had done more with less as a mid-major coach in Ohio, and for four seasons before that at UNC Wilmington. He was known for defense and his halfcourt motion offense, two qualities that are in high demand during tournament time.

Phillips called up Roy Williams to ask him what he thought of Brownell. Apparently the two had clashed during Brownell's tenure in Wilmington, when the Tar Heels and Seahawks played two regular-season games.

"Roy and Brad had some words at some point," Phillips recalled. "I said, 'Roy, just give me your straight opinion.' He said, 'You know we don't get along, but I will tell you this: He can really coach.'

"So I trusted that as a pretty good compliment."

All signs pointed to Brownell until Phillips and D'Andrea pointed a car toward Atlanta to see what this Stansbury guy was all about. He had done impressive things in Starkville, having claimed the 2004 SEC regular-season title, two SEC Tournament titles and six NCAA appearances.

Phillips and D'Andrea were both football people at a football school. By their own admission they weren't all that plugged in to basketball circles. Stansbury had a reputation for playing fast and loose with the rules, but they weren't aware of it as Stansbury made Phillips swoon in Atlanta.

The interview took place the day of Clemson's spring game at Death Valley. Phillips and D'Andrea came back thinking Stansbury might just be the guy. But then things broke down.

Stansbury's agent was Jimmy Sexton, who informed Clemson that Stansbury's Mississippi State contract guaranteed him a $100,000 raise each year regardless of what happened on the court. That had to be part of the deal if he came to Clemson.

"Whenever you're negotiating with just the agent and the head coach isn't involved, that's not a good sign," Phillips said.

D'Andrea, now the AD at Anderson University, said he and Phillips were uncomfortable at the thought of the basketball coach making more than the football coach. Swinney, who made $800,000 in his first year as head coach, had just been bumped to $1.75 million after the ACC Atlantic Division title helped him cash in on an incentive-laden contract.

"That's half a million bucks over five years even if you don't win," D'Andrea said, referring to Stansbury's guaranteed raises.

Also, Clemson was doing homework on Stansbury's background. D'Andrea said Larry LaForge, the faculty athletics representative at the time, expressed reservations about hiring him.

"We began to check on elements that you want to check on," he said. "We looked into graduation rates, discipline. We talked to the NCAA. That took us a couple of days. You just find out as much as you can by talking to people.

"We just got some information we weren't too enamored with. I'll say that."

Two days after the interview, Stansbury announced he had turned down Clemson and was staying at Mississippi State. Phillips and D'Andrea maintain they were the ones who decided to move in a different direction.

Hours after the Stansbury news, Clemson's university plane was headed to a tiny municipal airport on the plains of Brownell's home turf in Indiana, 55 miles west of Wright State's campus in Dayton.

"It was a dog-gone cornfield," D'Andrea said.

Phillips and D'Andrea wanted to meet with Brownell one more time, and they brought along LaForge. When they returned to Clemson, they informed president Jim Barker of their choice and then called Brownell with an offer.

The next day, the 41-year-old Brownell was wearing a suit in the McFadden Building as Phillips introduced him as Clemson's 22nd head basketball coach.

Brownell, who was convinced he wanted to be at Clemson after the interview in Charlotte, was nervous when he saw Stansbury was a serious candidate.

"You never know how these things work," he said that day. "I've done this a couple of times. And more times than not, there ends up being a left-field candidate that kind of comes out of nowhere. Sometimes it's the candidate just trying to pique everybody's interest and then go back and ask for more money. And then sometimes it's real.

"I've been around enough to know that you've just got to wait it out and see what happens."

The same might now be said of a coaching tenure that is suddenly aging quite well.

"He knew what hard work and grit were," D'Andrea said. "He had all the qualities."

Stansbury announced his retirement two years later after 14 seasons at Mississippi State. In 2014 he was back in coaching as an assistant at Texas A&M. He has been head coach at Western Kentucky for two years. Purnell resigned at DePaul in 2015 after five seasons, a 54-105 record and no NCAA appearances.

What might have been?

Who cares?

Phillips is too busy enjoying what's happening right now, and he said present AD Dan Radakovich shares in the success for his commitment to basketball and his decision to retain Brownell a year ago amid considerable scrutiny.

"One of the things I really appreciate is Dan was methodical in his thinking. He didn't knee-jerk. One of the first things he did was pick the ball up on the facilities we had planned and got that going. He did an excellent job of staying the course, and he wouldn't have done that if he didn't feel very good about Brad."

With everyone in these parts now intoxicated by the rare taste of 16 sweetness, this seems like a moment of wisdom and clarity that only hindsight can provide.

It's now clear, after a six-year NCAA drought, that simply getting there isn't as easy as it once seemed.

It's also now clear that Phillips hired a darned good coach.

Another darned good coach.

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