Iowa State fired basketball coach Wayne Morgan and his staff Friday in the wake of a reported recruiting scam.

ISU Athletics Director Jamie Pollard said during a news conference that he met Thursday evening with school president Gregory Geoffroy and with Morgan.

“We informed him that we were making a change in the leadership of our men’s basketball program, effective immediately,” Pollard said.

He said the firing came after poor performance from the program, but that there were other reasons.

“The fact that we didn’t make the NCAA tournament or the NIT contributed to this decision, but I want to emphasize it clearly is not the only reason for making this decision,” he said.

Morgan’s firing came two days after a report surfaced that a number of college basketball programs may have steered more than $100,000 to a California business run by a junior college coach.

A CBS Sportsline.com story Wednesday alleged that D1 Scheduling, a company founded by Los Angeles Community College coach Mike Miller, might have been delivering LACC players to Division I schools, including Iowa State, which paid the company to arrange games.

Pollard said that he had held discussions with Geoffroy about whether to make a change in the program before Wednesday, but the decision to fire Morgan wasn’t made until after the story broke.

“Although the events of this week concerning basketball scheduling is not the reason we are making this change, the timing of that situation and the negative national publicity that Iowa State has received as a result … has contributed to the timing of our decision,” Pollard said.

The report said D1 Scheduling turned a profit by taking a significant cut of the money paid by schools looking for opponents. Schools on the receiving end made far less than they would have if the games were made without a matchmaker.

According to the report, Iowa State, along with Iona, Louisiana Tech, Tennessee State, Howard and Norfolk State, have used D1 Scheduling to arrange matchups with each other. Those schools all have signed players from LACC. Most Division I schools do not use outside help when scheduling games.

CBS Sportsline.com reported that Iowa State appeared to be the centerpiece of the operation, and that under Morgan, ISU used D1 Scheduling to arrange guarantee games only when the other school also recruited LACC players.

Iowa State has one LACC player on its roster: reserve Anthony Davis. Morgan said earlier this week that he did not commit any violations when he recruited Davis to Iowa State. He said D1 Scheduling was contracted to help Iowa State improve its non-conference schedule _ not recruit players.

“Everything we did was legal,” Morgan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Friday. “I did not do anything wrong.”

Morgan, 55, has a career record of 146-123 in nine seasons as a college coach. He spent six seasons as the head coach at Long Beach State and 12 seasons as an assistant under Jim Boeheim at Syracuse.

The Cyclones entered this season ranked No. 25, but stumbled to a 16-14 record and failed to reach postseason play. Iowa State reached the semifinals of the NIT in 2004, Morgan’s first season, and lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament last season.

“Of course I was blindsided. I didn’t expect to be terminated,” Morgan said. “When was the last time you heard someone get to the NIT final four in his first year, the second round of the NCAA tournament his second year, (average) 18 wins a year and get terminated?”

Morgan replaced Larry Eustachy in 2003, and went 55-39 in three seasons as Iowa State’s head coach.

He spent one season as an assistant under Eustachy, who was forced to resign after the publication of newspaper photographs showing him drinking and partying with college students on Big 12 road trips.

Pollard said the search for a new coach will begin immediately.