The news that Oliver Purnell was gone came in the dead of night.

Though news spread with much less velocity in 2010, before the numbing saturation of social media, this was still a sensation on the morning of April 6.

As the hours passed, it wasn't just that he was leaving. It wasn't just that he was leaving for DePaul.

It was the abrupt nature of it. Just like that, virtually in the dead of night, the man who orchestrated so much fun and excitement and legitimacy for a traditional pushover was out the door. And even if you were in the camp of folks who were tired of going one-and-done in three straight NCAA Tournaments, the swiftness of his departure was still a bit of a punch to the gut.

On top of that: You thought that if Purnell ever did leave, it would be a tearful departure. One in which he would profess his love of Clemson and his time here. One in which he would express just how much seven years in these hills meant to him and his family.

There would be none of that. Even for his players, there would be no calls or texts letting them know what was going on before or even after the news broke.

The news came on a Tuesday morning. Late Wednesday afternoon, we picked up word that Purnell was coming back to speak with his team for a final time. So we showed up that evening and waited outside the team's entrance to Littlejohn Coliseum.

Sure enough, the players started driving up and filing in. And sure enough, at 8:30 here came Purnell in his black Range Rover.

We were the only media outlet there. We asked him how he was doing.

"I've been better," he said.

Purnell told us he expected the meeting to last around a half hour. It lasted 10 minutes, tops. His players weren't particularly excited to see him. Some of them didn't even show.

We spent a few minutes with Purnell afterward, as he stood on the corner of Perimeter Rd. and the Avenue of Champions -- across the street from his corner office in the Jervey Athletic Center.

We were struck by how clinical, maybe even cold, Purnell seemed as he discussed the reasons for his decision. Such detachment isn't necessarily a knock on him or any coach, but it was striking because you always thought leaving would be hard for him. This seemed not so hard at all.

After the interview, the dominant emotion on our part was exhilaration. This was an exclusive story, the first interview with Purnell by anyone since the news of his departure broke.

But then came the realization that we were now neck deep in a coaching search. The interview with Purnell was great and all, but now everyone wanted to know who was next.

And so the chase began -- a chase that stands as the craziest, most eventful news-gathering operation in Tigerillustrated.com's 20-year history.

The next morning, I get a call from Cris. He's received a tip from a trusted source that Terry Don Phillips and Bill D'Andrea are on their way to Charlotte to interview candidates for the job.

This was a great nugget. But we had no idea where they were going to be doing the interviews. And I was not in Charlotte. I was at my house in Clemson, trying to figure out how to chase a story two hours away.

If only we could somehow get to the private hangar at Charlotte International Airport, maybe we could spot Phillips and D'Andrea and then follow them wherever they were going.

We thought about trying to call someone we knew at The Charlotte Observer to help us. But that was too complicated, and we needed someone to get there, like, now.

"Wait a minute," I thought. "Brett Jensen lives in Charlotte. And he freaking loves stuff like this."

Brett and I had been friends for years, dating to my days at The Augusta Chronicle and his at the Anderson Independent-Mail when we both covered college football.

Brett and Cris? Not so much. Competitive situations on a beat tend to make you look for reasons to dislike the people you're competing with, and when Brett covered Clemson for another site there weren't many warm and fuzzies between him and Cris.

But when duty calls, egos and past grievances are put aside in short order. Brett, now working in radio in Charlotte, was available and eager to help. Cris was all for it.

I asked Brett to get in his car and act on my hunch that Phillips and D'Andrea were flying into Charlotte's private terminal, the Wilson Air Center. He showed up there and, within 10 minutes, sure enough: the sight of Clemson's two-man search committee exiting the building and getting into a van.

Brett follows the van, which ends up at an Embassy Suites near the airport.

Bingo.

At this point it needs to be said that not every news story is a cloak-and-dagger mission. Sometimes you have people in the right places who can help you chase a story in ways that keep you from having to literally chase a van as it pulls away from an airport.

But with a coaching search, you gather the information by almost any means necessary. Largely because the people conducting the search are using any means necessary to keep the media from learning details. It requires creativity, calm amid all the adrenaline, and quick decisions based on information you've gathered.

The decision to call up Brett ended up being the most vital part of a coaching search that we owned in an extraordinary way. He spent that entire day staked out in his car directly in front of the Embassy Suites lobby.

I was in regular phone contact with Brett as the procession of coaches began.

"Billy D. would come out to meet each one of them when they got there," Brett recalled two days ago over the phone. "I had backed my car into a parking spot, with the back of the car facing the hotel lobby. I was literally 40 feet from where Billy D. was coming out to greet these coaches."

One of those coaches was Al Skinner of Boston College. He was easily recognizable. So we quickly published the story that Skinner was interviewing.

Another man fit the profile of a coach who was there to interview -- tall, wearing a suit, emerging from a cab with no luggage -- but Brett couldn't place him.

So I started making calls to try to figure out who it might be. Someone told me about some internal buzz that Wright State's coach, a guy by the name of Brad Brownell, was going to be interviewing.

I found a picture of Brownell and texted it to Brett. He thought it was him, but he wasn't certain. And in cases like these, you have to be certain.

A while later, the guy was done with the interview and back in a cab -- presumably headed back to the airport. I asked Brett if there was any way he could get in front of the guy to make doubly sure it was Brownell.

Sure enough, the cab drops the guy off at the airport. Brett, parked behind the cab in the loading zone, watches the guy disappear through the double doors.

"I got out of my car and left it in the dang loading zone," Brett recalled. "I ran in and saw him at the ticketing counter and sort of casually walked up to him as if I was just walking by."

Brett said hello and asked the guy if he was the coach at Coppin State.

"Nope," he said. "Wright State."

Bingo.

It was now time to publish the story that Brownell was interviewing.

Jensen had some work obligations the next day, so he wasn't going to be able to help. That meant I was on the way to Charlotte to track Day 2 of the interviews.

The in-laws were in town, and they'd recently bought a new SUV. The father-in-law, upon hearing of my bizarre mission, suggested I take his car because the back windows were tinted and I could sit in the back and observe without being recognized. Great idea.

So the father-in-law's car ends up at the Embassy Suites, and backs into the same parking spot Brett used a day earlier. Sure enough, D'Andrea went through the same routine on this day as he came out to greet candidates. I sat in the back of the car wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.

Wofford's Mike Young came through, and it wasn't hard to identify him. Another story published.

Another guy arrived I had never seen before, and Cris was able to do some legwork back home in his office to get a photo match. It was Cliff Warren of Jacksonville University. So our story on Warren was now out.

At one point, I emerged from the car to stretch and get some fresh air. Just as I get out, here comes D'Andrea through the double doors -- about 20 feet away. He doesn't look my way. He lights up a cigarette and calls someone on his cell phone.

Whew.

Also interviewing that day was Ron Bradley, a Clemson assistant under Purnell. So his meeting was now published.

Later, I see Blaine Taylor of Old Dominion. He had such distinct features -- heavy-set, with thick black hair and a big black mustache. It was now time to publicize Taylor's interview.

So we had first-reported all five of these interviews while all the other media outlets were in the dark. We were paranoid that at some point the phone would ring and it'd be Phillips or D'Andrea, wondering how in the hell we were finding out about these developments in virtual real-time. We found out later that they weren't aware of what we were reporting.

We headed back to Clemson that Friday evening because we had to cover the spring game the next day. Phillips and D'Andrea were conspicuous in their absence at Death Valley that day, and we knew they were probably up to something.

Rumors started spreading that they had interviewed Mississippi State's Rick Stansbury the day of the spring game, and we were able to confirm that through a source.

They had gone to Atlanta to meet with Stansbury, and we later learned that Stansbury had all but sold Phillips that he was the guy to replace Purnell. D'Andrea wasn't as convinced. He told Phillips that Stansbury reminded him of a cross between Rick Barnes and Joel Osteen.

And then once the two started asking around about Stansbury and learned he had a reputation for shady tactics, they began experiencing reservations. And then Stansbury's agent, Jimmy Sexton, said guaranteed annual raises of $100,000 had to be part of the deal. So the talks broke down, and Stansbury announced Monday he was staying in Starkville.

That same day, we broke the news that Phillips quickly turned back to Brownell with a second interview. Everything now pointed to the 41-year-old being the leading candidate.

Later that night, we received information that this was more than just an interview. This was Phillips and D'Andrea heading to a municipal airport in Indiana with senior associate athletics director Katie Hill and faculty athletics representative Larry LaForge. They were going there to get this deal done, and we first reported it on the evening of April 12.

The next day, Brownell was in Clemson being introduced as the Tigers' new basketball coach. As Cris and I walked into the McFadden Building before the press conference, we introduced ourselves to assistants Mike Winiecki and Lucas McKay. When we told them we were with Tigerillustrated.com, their eyes lit up. They had been breathlessly following our coverage in the preceding days, just like all the Clemson fans.

Later that summer, Brownell and Dabo Swinney were at a booster-club event in Charlotte. Brett was there doing interviews for his radio job, and he interviewed Brownell for 10 to 15 minutes and told Brownell he used to cover Clemson.

Brett even mentioned his friendship with that Larry Williams guy at Tigerillustrated.com.

It never registered to Brownell that this guy interviewing him was the same guy who chased him in the airport to strike up a conversation that day.

That crazy-as-heck day in a crazy-as-heck week on the chase.

The most extraordinary chase we've ever been a part of, without a doubt.