St. Paul, Minn. ? A day after revelations about recruits’ trips to strip clubs and underage drinking during official campus visits since early December, Minnesota University athletic director Joel Maturi began an investigation and met Thursday with Gophers football coach Glen Mason.

Maturi and Mason talked by phone Wednesday, and the AD said there was “frustration” on the coach’s part that recruits were taken to Deja Vu Nightclub in downtown Minneapolis during at least three weekends and also engaged in underage drinking at a campus bar.

Maturi said he did not ask Mason whether the coach knew trips to strip clubs and underage drinking took place by players on recruiting weekends.

“In the conversation (with Mason) . . . it was insinuated to me that obviously that’s not condoned,” Maturi said. “It’s not a pertinent question.”

Mason, a former coach at Kansas University, commented about the situation Thursday.

“They know in our program if they don’t do the right thing, they know they’re going to be held accountable by me,” Mason said of his Gopher players. “I’ll deal with that (possible punishment) accordingly, as I see fit, on an individual basis,” he said.

The revelations came 16 months after Gophers football player Brandon Hall was shot to death in downtown Minneapolis after a Gophers teammate was assaulted; Hall was one of 20 or 30 teammates who came to the scene. Coaches emphasized to players after that the importance of avoiding potentially troublesome situations.

“I don’t know if they looked at it as being troublesome — I can’t speak for the kids,” Maturi said. “But I don’t think they correlate Brandon Hall’s death with going to a strip club.”

University president Robert Bruninks declined to comment on the reports. But Board of Regents chair David Metzen said he was “very disappointed” to hear about the allegations.

Minnesota football coach Glen Mason, right, speaks after a report surfaced that Gopher players took recruits to bars and strip clubs during campus visits. Mason, a former coach at Kansas University, spoke Thursday in Minneapolis.

“It’s not the Minnesota way,” Metzen said. “But I have tremendous confidence in our president and our athletic director.

“If it did happen, it’ll never happen again.”

Sought-after recruit Lydon Murtha of Hutchinson, Minn., told the St. Paul Pioneer Press Tuesday that a trip to the strip club on his Dec. 5 official visit was a “turnoff” and contributed to his decision to back out of his commitment to the Gophers to attend Nebraska.

Murtha told the Minneapolis Star Tribune the trip to the strip club was “not the reason at all” he decided to back out on the Gophers for the Cornhuskers.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that on at least three weekends of official visits, recruits were taken by Gophers players to Deja Vu, including one occasion when 17-year-old recruit Dominique Barber of Wayzata gained entry to the 18-and-older club.