By: Doug Lesmerises (Cleveland Plain Dealer) — COLUMBUS, Ohio — It’s almost unfair to Iowa to talk about quarterback ankle injuries. The Hawkeyes’ Ricky Stanzi is out for this game after having surgery on his injured right ankle. Ohio State’s Terrelle Pryor is just taking fewer practice snaps with lingering pain in his left ankle from the New Mexico State game two weeks ago.

“It’s hurting, but there’s always something in the back of your head saying keep going,” Pryor said Wednesday. “It hurts today, it’s still hurting, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

There’s something the rest of the Buckeyes can do, though. There’s no reason to expect the Buckeyes will rely on their running backs any less Saturday than they did in last week’s 24-7 win over Penn State.

“The run game is the quarterback’s best friend,” OSU quarterbacks coach Nick Siciliano said Wednesday. “Once your running game gets going, your play-action stuff opens up, you’ve got linebackers biting on run fakes and when they’re up in the box, there are things opening up and the field looks entirely bigger than it did when you’re not running the ball very well.”

OSU tailbacks carried the ball 39 times against Penn State for 143 yards, not dominance by any stretch, but enough to grind away and control the game. Running back Brandon Saine, who carried 20 times for 68 yards, said the Buckeyes used some old and new plays to go at the Nittany Lions.

“We came at them with a little different stuff we hadn’t done before,” Saine said. “And we gave an all-out effort and I don’t think their defense was ready for it. It felt like while we were in the game we were doing well with the tailbacks, and when something is going good, [the coaches] like to keep it going. They really wanted to get Terrelle in a good place throwing the ball, so we were there to help him.”

Pryor is glad for the help, especially as he continues along at less than 100 percent. Before the Penn State game, Pryor said you’d have to kill him to keep him out of the lineup. But it was obvious Wednesday that he’s not totally himself, so the more help, the better.

“It just keeps a lot of teams guessing,” Pryor said of the involving the tailbacks more. “Whatever you can do to keep them guessing, we’ll take it.”

Offensive coordinator Jim Bollman said the guessing game was a big part of the Penn State success, with two reverses, and some successful swing passes that were ruled laterals to receiver DeVier Posey, in the game buy prescription drugs plan.

“It was an overall thing,” Bollman said. “It wasn’t like we ran the ball down their throats.”

No, it was like the Buckeyes worked a balanced offensive plan that led to only 175 total yards from Pryor, his third-lowest total of the season, yet brought the quarterback much praise. Stats weren’t a big deal.

“But they were,” Siciliano interrupted. “Zero turnovers.”

And that’s the stat that will matter again for Pryor against Iowa. Against Penn State, he was as calm and as disciplined as Siciliano has seen him, and Pryor wasn’t sure why that was. But he wants to maintain it with the Rose Bowl on the line.

“As a team, it’s sort of like on the edge,” Pryor said. “You lose, you don’t go. If you win, you do go.”

Along those lines, Pryor said coach Jim Tressel showed the teams stats this week about teams that won big a game and then followed up it with a loss.

“Maybe sometimes it’s a mind-set where people think you accomplished something,” Pryor said, “but we can’t let that happen to us. It could happen. It happens a lot. And we can’t let that happen to us because we have a goal we want to reach.”

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