Here is video from OSU coach Jim Tressel's Thursday press conference.

Defensive end Keith Wells from Georgia arrived at Ohio State last year with high expectations. He was one of the top recruits in the nation and he de-committed from Florida State and picked the Buckeyes instead. Wells earned a little bit of playing time as a true freshman for OSU in 2008 and many thought he had a bright future.

And he perhaps still does. But Wells hasn’t played this season and Jim Tressel explained why on Thursday.

The OSU head coach was asked which Buckeye player is simulating Iowa standout DE Adrian Clayborn in practice.

“Keith Wells has been doing the bulk of it, because right now we’re redshirting him,” Tressel said. “He played a little bit last year, so this year we’re redshirting him. He came down to the scout team and really worked hard at it and did a good job.”

Injury report

It’s been a walking MASH unit for Ohio State this year on the offensive line – namely at the tackle spots – but the Buckeyes are getting healthy at just the right time. They will face off visiting Iowa on Saturday (3:30 p.m.; ABC/ESPN) in the de-facto Big Ten championship game and all of their offensive linemen will be available to play.

The two players asked about the most this week have been sophomore tackles J.B. Shugarts (foot) and Mike Adams (knee).

“Yeah, they’ve both been practicing,” Tressel said. “Shugarts probably half or two-thirds of the time. I would expect him as the week goes – (Thursday) there aren’t that many reps – so I will assume he will do all the reps that he’s asked to do. And then we’ll have to see how it unfolds on Saturday.”

Adams has been out for almost a month, so it would seem to be a long-shot that he would start against the Hawkeyes. But Tressel isn’t ruling anything out.

“I don’t know if he’s ready to play 60 plays,” Tressel said. “I would say this: he’ll play. I’m not exactly sure how we’ll do the rotation, but I would guess probably two or more guys will play each of the tackle spots. I would think a guy like Andrew Miller could help inside and out. So, I’d like to think we’ll play eight linemen in this game.”

As was pointed out to the coach, this is the healthiest Ohio State’s offensive line has been all season.

“Yeah,” Tressel said. “I think we’ve got more guys ready to go. Now, the degree of their health, it would be hard for me to be a judge of that because I’m not the one whose foot hurts or ankle hurts or whatever. But they’re all available. So, that’s a good thing, especially with what we’re getting ready to face (against Iowa).”

Junior safety broke into the starting lineup early in the season, displacing the ineffective Anderson Russell. However, Russell won the starting job back recently, which left many scratching their collective heads. Hines did have an elbow injury, but he said it wasn’t serious by any means.

Tressel was asked if Hines’ elbow is in fact injured and if that is what is keeping him from playing more.

“I think he’s banged up in general,” Tressel said. “But he’ll be ready to go. He won’t be limited.”

Quick-hitters

Tressel on Ohio State’s defense, and how much Cameron Heyward and Thaddeus Gibson are dominating up front

“Well, the good thing about our defense is each one of them in all the rooms prepares like crazy and play with a lot of confidence. But they also play with a lot of responsibility. They don’t want to be the 1/11^th that maybe doesn’t do their thing. So, whether it’s the guys out on the corners or the safeties or the linebackers or the guys up front that rotate in – which we probably play seven or eight guys up there – whoever is in the game wants to do their part.

“Certainly Cameron and Thaddeus have been excellent as far as applying pressure, which is a great thing for the guys covering people. But they are facing a lot better of an offensive line I think as a whole that they’ve seen. So, it will be a heck of a challenge against Iowa.”

Is Brandon Saine the starting tailback this week?

“I don’t know who will play the first play – that’s up to my big brother (running backs coach Doc Tressel),” Jim Tressel said. “But Brandon will play, Boom (Herron) will play and Jordan (Hall) is ready. So, again, we have three available, and Jermil (Martin) is kind of the lefty in the bullpen. So, that’s how we’ll go.”

Tressel on the difficulties of winning five consecutive Big Ten championships, which is what will happen if the Buckeyes defeat Iowa:

“Well, anything that is highly competitive, the degree of difficulty of maintaining a certain level (is tough) because the other guys are trying to maintain a certain level too and there’s competition. We don’t look at things in groups like that. We look at things in today and it will be highly difficult today. The only way you’re going to be the Big Ten champions is to be good today, which is irrelevant to the four before that, or the 30-some prior to that that have been won at Ohio State. It’s about being about to do it today. So, it’s difficult.”

It was pointed out to Tressel that it would have been “unheard of” for Ohio State to win five straight Big Ten titles in the 1980’s and 90’s. And now, fans seem to be taking it for granted. The coach was asked if his fan base is a bit spoiled these days.

“I’ll let that one go with the blogs sites,” Tressel said with a smile. “I don’t have any opinion on that.”

(Yeah, of course he wasn’t going to bite on that one.)

Tressel on Iowa’s defense:

“They do two things extremely well. One is they put pressure on you with their front, which affects the quarterback, which is what we try to do. And two, they always keep the ball in front of them. You’re not going to get past them. They are going to drop and they’re going to keep their eyes on the football. They’ll play a little bit of man, not much.

“They’ll come after you. They probably came after us more in ’06 than they did in ’03, ’04 and ’05. So, they’ll come after you. You better be prepared or they’ll get you.

“But in general, they are going to keep the ball in front of them. And when the ball is in front of them, there’s pressure, and all of a sudden there’s errant passes and maybe the pass is only off by a little bit and it catches someone’s hand and then ‘schwoop’ they’re there.

“The big one that turned around their Indiana game was a pressure. The ball was down there on the (Iowa) 4 and they blitzed like crazy and the ball got batted. Their D-line does a great job. I bet they’ve batted 25 balls down from passers. That one that they batted and it hit a guy and hit another guy and they were screamin’ to the ball and No. 9 (safety Tyler Sash) catches it and goes almost the length of the field for a touchdown and they turned the game around. They’ve got a great combination of pressure and presence.”

Tressel on whether he and Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz approach football in a similar fashion:

“Well, I think that you can see that special teams are very important to them; they’re very important to us. You can see that they want to be a balanced team on offense; we’d like to be a balanced team. You can see that they want to put pressure on the quarterback; so would we.

“So, I think in a lot of ways (we are similar). But that’s not unique. There’s 120 teams and probably a lot of them feel the same way.”

With Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi out, some analysts are saying the Hawkeyes need to take chances and pull out all the stops to win. Even with redshirt freshman James Vandenberg getting the start, some people think that Iowa will try and surprise the Buckeyes with some deep passes early in the game. Does Tressel agree?

“I think they’ll do what they do,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll change. But they’ll be some things that quarterback maybe a little better than the other one. Maybe some of the things that the other one did significantly better than him. So, you might not see (the exact same thing). But you aren’t going to turn on the film after the game and say, ‘Oh, this was all different because of this different quarterback.’ They throw it down the field. They play action, they misdirect. They won’t change.”