Maryland Staking Its Claim as the Top Contender to Wisconsin's Big Ten Supremacy

"Wisconsin, Michigan State, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio State and Michigan."

That's how one unidentified Big Ten coach responded when Matt Norlander of CBSSports.com asked for his prediction of the top six teams in the league.

That's not a number sequence from Lost. It's where 14 Big Ten beat writers projected the Terrapins to finish in their inaugural season in the Big Ten.

Whoops.

There are plenty of games left to be played, but after a second win over Big Ten staple Michigan State in three weeks' time—this one in 75-59 blowout fashion—No. 14 Maryland appears to have finally put an end to the "Who is the second-best team in the Big Ten?" debate.

Unless, of course, you want to start the argument that it should actually be Maryland at No. 1 and Wisconsin at No. 2. We're not ready to start the debate, but we wouldn't stop it from starting, either.

Based on all that happened between April and the beginning of December, it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Three key players—Shaq Cleare, Nick Faust and Roddy Peters—transferred away from Maryland in early April. Seth Allen joined them on the train out of College Park in early May, and Charles Mitchell skipped town before Memorial Day. Then in early August, highly rated freshman Trayvon Reed was dismissed from the team.

Adding injury to insult, Evan Smotrycz fractured his foot less than a month before the season began, and Dez Wells fractured his wrist less than a month after it began.

We're not talking about senior walk-ons or glorified cheerleaders, either. They were seven of the eight leading scorers from the 2013-14 team and a freshman who arguably would have been their starting center this year.

No need to fear, Terps fans.

Trimble gotchu.

A lot of writers out there want you to believe Jahlil Okafor has already won the Freshman of the Year award, but Melo Trimble added nicely to an already stellar "rookie" campaign with 24 points in Saturday's win over Michigan State—including this ankle-breaking, first-half-ending, step-back triple that left many sending "Get well soon" tweets to Tum Tum Nairn.

In mid-December, Trimble told Don Markus of The Baltimore Sun, "Since Dez and Evan have been out, I've been the next leader to come up and it's been good for me. I've started to become comfortable and more aggressive."

And now that he has a full supporting cast, Maryland could be nearly impossible to stop.

The Terrapins are 17-2, even though the players around Trimble are just now starting to consistently play well.

Wells and Smotrycz have been back for a few weeks, but Wednesday's game against Rutgers was the first time this season that both veterans posted an O-rating of 87 or better, according to KenPom.com.

If you're not familiar with O-rating, let's just say that's not exactly a high number. Trimble has an O-rating of at least 103 in 15 of 19 games and has nine games of 120 or better. For the 2013-14 season, Wells' rating was 109.6 and Smotrycz's was 107.3.

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

And even in that game against Rutgers, Jake Layman had a poor shooting night and Trimble was average at best—hence the near upset to a team with no chance of making the NCAA tournament.

According to KenPom.com, all four of those guys had an O-rating of at least 116 against Michigan State—hence the very comfortable win over a Spartans team that recently destroyed both Indiana and Iowa.

With those four players firing on all cylinders while Damonte Dodd—an underrated sophomore forward unexpectedly thrust into a full-time role without Mitchell or Reed in the picture—blocks some shots without getting into early foul trouble, it's not a stretch to say that Maryland could beat any team in the country.

That's right. Any team.

A full-strength Maryland is light years better than the Ole Miss or Texas A&M teams that pushed Kentucky to the wire.

Is this sustainable, though?

Better yet, have the Terrapins even reached their full potential?

Even in Saturday's win, only two Terps scored in double figures—Layman finished a point behind Trimble with 23. Wells had just nine points on seven field-goal attempts, both of which are well below his norm.

And while Trimble has been playing like a stud from the moment his college career began, fellow freshmen Dion Wiley and Jared Nickens are still heating up while searching for a consistent three-point stroke.

Not only is Maryland great and getting better, but no other team in the Big Ten is really stepping up to challenge Maryland as Wisconsin's biggest threat.

Indiana only has one conference loss, but the Hoosiers were destroyed by Michigan State and haven't won any of their other games—at Nebraska, vs. Ohio State, vs. Penn State—by more than five points.

Iowa already has a season sweep over Ohio State—we can argue how much that means given the Buckeyes' middling RPI (49 before Saturday's loss)—but like Indiana, Iowa was crushed by the Spartans. Unlike Indiana, it was on Iowa's home court.

That would seem to be a strong argument for Michigan State as the second best team until you remember that Maryland is 2-0 against the Spartans. Beyond that, every Big Ten team other than Maryland and Wisconsin has at least two conference losses.

It's still a little weird that the Terrapins aren't in the ACC, but they are already clearly the second best team in the Big Ten.

Maryland only plays one regular-season game against Wisconsin—a home game on February 24—and it will likely be the deciding factor in who wins this conference.

So much for those bottom-half-of-the-Big Ten predictions.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.