Updated at 11:42 p.m. CST March 17

Iowa State’s trip to the NCAA tournament caps a two-year journey that began in turmoil.

When Wayne Morgan became the Cyclones’ coach in 2003, he inherited a program divided by the fallout from the departure of Larry Eustachy, who left in disgrace after being photographed drinking and partying with college students on road trips.

“When I first took over, it was like the Civil War,” said Morgan, who had been an assistant at Iowa State. “I was like the guy who they found and nobody knows who he is.”

They soon found out. Morgan took Iowa State to the semifinals of the NIT his first season and now the Cyclones are in the NCAAs. They’ll play Minnesota in a first-round game Friday in Charlotte, N.C.

It’s considered a toss-up game, with Iowa State (18-11) seeded ninth and Minnesota (21-10) a No. 8 seed.

“We’re not going to take anything for granted,” Iowa State’s Curtis Stinson said. “We’re going to go in there and play like we have been playing, with our backs against the wall. That’s the only way to do it in the NCAA tournament.”

Morgan wasn’t well known when he was hired because he had been with the program for only a year and spent most of it on the road recruiting, an effort that brought in key players such as Stinson, Will Blalock, Tasheed Carr and Rahshon Clark. He had no roots in Iowa, having spent six seasons as the coach at Long Beach State and 11 as an assistant to Jim Boeheim at Syracuse.

There was plenty of work to do before he could even think about coaching.

One of the Cyclones’ starters, Adam Haluska, was thinking about transferring and he eventually did — to cross-state rival Iowa. The recruits had to be assured they were coming into a solid program. In the end, all of them honored their commitments. And he had to bring the fans back into the fold, some of whom were bitter over how Eustachy was forced out.

“What I tried to do was just let the fans, the players and everyone associated with the program try to get a feel that we’d be OK, get them to feel that I knew what I was doing,” Morgan said. “I think I was able to calm things down.

“Then that first year came, we started winning some games and people started to realize, ‘you know what, we have a chance to do OK.'”

There was more adversity this season. Assistant coach Bob Sundvold left in late October and the Cyclones lost two players as the second semester started, one because of grades and the other dismissed for breaking team rules.

Then they lost six straight games, including their first five in Big 12 play. Even the NIT was starting to look like a long shot, but Morgan again stepped in and calmed the storm.

“By telling them every day we had to get better and telling them, don’t worry about losing games,” he said. “If we keep working and getting better every day, there will come a time when we’ll win games. That day came.”

With a six-player rotation and an aggressive, turnover-causing zone defense, the Cyclones reeled off seven straight victories, including four over Top 25 opponents. They head to Charlotte having won 10 of their last 13 games.

“A lot of teams and a lot of players thought that we were left for dead,” center Jared Homan said.

Now Homan, 6-feet-10 and 250 pounds, will get a chance to throw his weight around against Jeff Hagen, Minnesota’s 7-foot, 270-pound center. The Cyclones also will have to contain Vincent Grier, who leads the Gophers with an 18.1 scoring average.

“Any matchup, I like,” said Stinson, Iowa State’s top scorer with a 17.3 average. “I’m ready to play anybody. We feel our chances are good, just like any other game.”