COLUMBUS, Ohio – A lot has changed in the last three months since the Ohio State basketball season ended and within the last couple of days a decision had been made to go in a different direction and now Thad Matta is out after a 13-year run with the program and a decorated career that has produced NCAA Tournament runs and NBA first round picks.

But Matta knows, it is a case of, 'what have you done for me lately?' and the product on the court has not been great over the last two seasons in terms of wins and losses and a change needed to be made, even if nobody involved wanted to see that move go down.

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"I don’t want to speak for (Gene Smith) but I don't think he really wanted to make this move," Matta said on Monday afternoon. "But after the discussion we both sort of agreed that it probably needed to be done. His job is to run this basketball program and I respect that, there is no doubt in my mind."

In terms of prolonged success, it would be difficult to find a better run than Matta years for the Ohio State basketball program with multiple Big Ten regular season and tournament championships as well as five runs in the NCAA Tournament that took the team to the Sweet Sixteen or further.

At the end of the day however, a decision had to be made.

"We were fortunate to have him as our basketball coach for so long and enjoy the great successes that you all had and all know about that he brought to this program," Smith, the Ohio State Director of Athletics said. "He set a standard for us."

Matta nearly broke into tears on more than one occasion during his final press conference with the Buckeyes. It just went to show how deeply invested Matta was in the program up until the very end.

"Obviously, this has probably the greatest 13 years of my life," Matta said. "Just looking around here and seeing all of these things that the guys have been able to accomplish, it has been awesome."

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The veteran coach did not want to take credit for all the successes over the 13 years he had spent with the program and wanted to put it on the people who surrounded him, most notably the players.

"I want to thank the players, damn we have had some good ones," Matta said. "Those are the guys who get the job done for you. And I am grateful to them."

As time went on, Matta's physical condition started to break down over time. Drop foot and four back surgeries (over Matta's life, the first one happening at age 15) all took a toll and because of that, his future was always questioned and that became a drag on recruiting as rival programs would point out Matta's limitations physically.

"It can beat a guy up," Matta added. "There is no question about that. This is a challenging profession, I have always said this, if you are not intimately involved on a daily basis, you are in the meetings and homes and gyms and working with the guys, you have no idea some of the things and challenges that lie there."

Only a few months ago Matta shared a story where a recruit had been told that Thad was dying.

All negative recruiting aside, the Buckeyes ran into a stretch of poor results on the recruiting trail and came up empty during a late run for several top players for the class of 2017. That played into the decision to make a change.

"Recruiting is a major part of that plan, we were not winning the battles in recruiting that I thought we might have a chance to win, as he did," Smith said. "So, as we started talking about that on Friday, the flow of the conversation took me to the reality, as I said to him, 'Thad, maybe it is time for us to make a leadership change' and he agreed."

Matta will now spend time working on his own physical well-being. He went to explain some of the rigors and struggles he dealt with daily to just get through the day including late night trips to see a team doctor to be able to just have normal mobility.

"My whole focus right now is trying to get healthy," Matta said. "That is all that I am concerned about. My whole focus is on trying to get my body where I can continue to be serviceable."

Thad would not close the door on him ever returning to coaching or not but did joke that he might go the route of a track coach where numbers don't like and angry parents would just have to deal with those results.

All joking aside, Matta did say that if he were fully healthy that he would probably still be the head coach of the Buckeyes.

Now comes the task of finding Matta's replacement. June is not an ideal time to find a new coach but Matta was hired in July, so it is not impossible, just difficult.

"I could see and sense that maybe it was time," Smith said. "That is where I broached it to him and we had a conversation about it being time and then we started talking about process for transition. Thad has agreed to help in the search as we move forward in the search."

There is no timeline in place to have a new coach in place.

"No time is optimal, this time is not the best," Smith said. "I need to be sensitive to what I am dealing with in this window of time. I do not have a timeline. I am going to do my best to search and find the right person that fits The Ohio State University."

Matta will be remembered for a lot of things during his time with the Buckeyes but there is one thing specifically that Matta hopes people will remember his 13-year run for.

"I hope I am always remembered for is that we always did it the right way," Matta said. "That to me is something that I am going to hang my hat on, that this program was run the right way."