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The Big Ten won’t be mentioned in any best-conference-in-the-nation conversations. Right now, it looks like a league filled with middle-of-the-road teams headed toward long offseasons.

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Just when I think I have a Big Ten team figured out, something goes wrong – or right, depending on which fan you’re talking to at the moment.

Indiana beat Kansas, then lost to IPFW and Nebraska and currently sits at 2-3 in conference play. Wisconsin won nine in a row before shooting 39 percent in a loss at Purdue, who followed up that huge victory by stumbling at Iowa, who turned around and got blown out by 35 at Northwestern.

Now Maryland, which lost to Nebraska and has wins over powerhouses American University and Towson by a combined 11 points, sits atop the Big Ten standings at 4-1. The Terps moved ahead of Michigan State, which has a loss to Northeastern on its resume and fell Sunday to an Ohio State club that entered the contest 0-4 in conference play.

Yeah, you try and figure this mess out. Want to know the longest current winning streak for any Big Ten team? It’s three games. That’s it.

Nebraska and Minnesota? Probably pretenders. Michigan and Illinois? Meh. Who can actually get behind Penn State? Can Hoosiers coach Tom Crean get all of his talent to perform without turning the ball over?

Frankly, the team I have the most confidence in right now is Northwestern. In my entire life, I’ve never uttered that statement in the middle of January.

Maybe it’s just a case of Big Ten teams beating each other up. Or maybe the conference as a whole just isn’t that good. The true test will be in March, when the selection committee decides how many teams are worthy of participating in the NCAA Tournament, and that’ll be followed by another evaluation period ending with how many victories Big Ten teams can add up.

Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan is the best player in the conference and needs to be getting more attention for national player of the year awards. The sophomore big man has four 20-20 games and had a string of eight straight double-doubles snapped in the loss to the Hawkeyes. But I’m not sold on Swanigan being enough for the Boilermakers to win the conference, let alone make a deep Tournament run.

Wisconsin has Bronson Koenig, Nigel Hayes and Ethan Happ. The Badgers might be the most complete team in the Big Ten. Or they can go out and shoot below or just above 40 percent on any given night like they did in losses to Creighton, North Carolina and Purdue.

Indiana has the best collection of talent with James Blackmon Jr., Thomas Bryant and OG Anunoby. The Hoosiers are also committing 15.1 turnovers per game, the worst average in the conference. Capable of beating Kansas and prone to losing to IPFW is a huge gap for evaluation. Who knows which team will show up nightly?

Truth is, I can see as few as four teams making the NCAA Tournament and as many as nine. Pardon the use of a cliche, but there really isn’t any easy game in the Big Ten – unless the opponent is Rutgers, maybe. Minnesota has the conference’s highest RPI at 14 and Nebraska has the nation’s toughest schedule, two metrics often used in determining a team’s Tournament qualifications. And that’s good for them, because a simple eye test might cause the committee to go blind some nights.

It would be a shame for Michigan State coach Tom Izzo to miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 20 years with such a talented freshman class that includes future lottery pick Miles Bridges. But when his starting group hits its first five shots Sunday against the Buckeyes and he removes four of the five in a mass substitution, leading to a five-minute scoring drought, maybe the absence would serve as a lesson learned.

It’s a bit of a surprise to see the Big Ten getting ridiculed for teams that are struggling to move ahead of the pack. They all seem stuck in the middle. But this has happened before, and multiple teams have reached the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament – even the Final Four.

How realistic is that this season? It depends on what day you ask me.

MORE: Northwestern Surging Towards First-Ever NCAA Tournament Appearance