The heart of a defense usually resides within its linebacking corps. With the loss of Matt Wilhelm and Cie Grant, Ohio State’s two best linebackers last season, the Buckeye coaching staff has spent a large part of the spring season looking for the right combination of players who will keep that heart pumping at a healthy rate.

With the young crop of linebackers in last year’s recruiting class – A.J. Hawk, Mike D’Andrea and Bobby Carpenter – as a solid starting point to look for replacements, the battles at linebacker have been some of the most intense on the team during the past few weeks.

Injuries have been the only thing able to slow the group down. The lone returning starter, senior Robert Reynolds, has missed the entire spring with a shoulder injury and Carpenter has been sidelined half the spring season after suffering damage to his eye while trying to break up a campus fight.

Although the injuries have put a slight damper on the spring battles, Tressel said he likes what he has seen from the guys who have been able to play.

“Mike D’Andrea has shown this spring that he’s certainly going to be a good one for us, as have A.J. and Bobby – before he got hurt,” said coach Jim Tressel.

All three of those players, all sophomores now, came into Columbus together as a very highly-touted unit with D’Andrea garnering most of the attention for his freakish athletic ability and brute strength. But while D’Andrea made some waves last year on special teams and in limited duty at linebacker, Hawk was the one making the biggest splash in his first season.

“I just wanted to come in and show people I could play – just to hit people and run around and make plays,” Hawk said. “I didn’t have too high of expectations; I just wanted to prove I could play.”

He certainly did prove his ability to play, ending the year with 26 tackles and two interceptions. With his strong debut season, he has secured himself as a front-runner to win one of the two open spots in the fall. Heading into the season, he knows the shoes he has to fill are big ones.

“We lost Matt Wilhelm and Cie Grant, and you can’t really replace those guys,” Hawk said. “A guy like Matt – he’s so smart he pretty much ran the whole defense. And Cie Grant – no one runs like him, and no one can make some of the plays he did.”

Buckeye fans across the country hope he is just being modest, and with the accolades Hawk and his counterparts have received thus far in their careers, that is likely the case. Hawk knows the linebacker position has a chance to be a special one for several years in Columbus.

“The first day of camp we came in and it was just us three,” Hawk said, referring to D’Andrea and Carpenter. “There was kind of a bond there right away, so of course we like playing together. When you know someone and come in with them and get used to the system with them, you get to know what they’re going to do and they know what you’re going to do.”

Although those three sophomores provide a strong nucleus to build around, they are not the only players in the mix. Reynolds figures to hold on to his starting spot after finishing sixth on the team with 62 tackles last year.

Another senior, Fred Pagac Jr., is finally healthy after battling with injuries the past couple years. He and D’Andrea are the top candidates for playing time at the middle linebacker spot.

Another talented middle linebacker, Anthony Schlegel, will sit out a year after transferring from Air Force, where he was a First Team All-Mountain West selection as a sophomore last year.

“He proved himself at Air Force and he’s proving himself here,” Hawk said. “He can play. He’s definitely not a joke – he deserves to be here.”