The Maryland Terrapins men's basketball team is on such a competitive high going into Sunday's game at Clemson that it's almost hard to imagine the sagging Tigers laying a paw on them, but that's why God made ACC road games.
The hot-shooting Terps have won four straight and will arrive at Littlejohn Coliseum on top of the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. Their only conference loss was an overtime defeat at Wake Forest, so fans could certainly be forgiven for starting to think about the Big Dance, but we'll know a lot more about the Terps and their postseason aspirations after Clemson and Thursday's road game against Florida State.
Talk all you want about the parity (or is it mediocrity?) that has made predicting the ACC such a crapshoot. That only makes it more imperative for the Terps to score some meaningful victories on the road to shore up their resume, and Sunday's game will be a major test of their recent momentum.
The Tigers have lost three straight and have fallen out of the AP Top 25, but they were ranked 17th last week and still rank 21st in the ESPN/USA Today poll. They have not been invincible at home -- losing to Illinois in early December and No. 7 Duke last week -- but they dealt the Terps one of their most lopsided defeats of the 2008-09 season at Littlejohn last February.
Florida State's towering Seminoles present a different set of challenges, even though the Terrapins already have beaten them at Comcast Center this season.
There was a time in the ACC when the top-half teams just had to hold serve at home to get into the NCAA tournament. If the Terps beat everybody they were supposed to beat and stole a few road games, they could figure on a trip somewhere in March. They can't assume that this season, since they did not register a significant nonconference victory and the conference is no longer dominant enough for every 8-8 team to impress the selection committee.
That's both good news and bad news for Maryland, which has broken on top of a conference that just about everybody has a chance to win. Staying there might be another story, but a head start is not a bad thing for a team that seemed to be searching for an identity after losing to William and Mary at home in late December.
Give Gary Williams credit. He is a master at turning a tough loss into a teachable moment, and he brought the Terps into the ACC season at just the right pitch. They bounced back from the William and Mary loss with a victory at UNC Greensboro and have scored their four ACC victories by an average of 17 points.
Nobody got too excited when they beat then-No. 19 Florida State in their conference opener and lost at Wake Forest in overtime, but a solid road win at Boston College turned out to be a sign of things to come. Frankly, it's hard to imagine that the Terps can play much better than they did in their past two games at Comcast, both 20-plus-point blowout victories over North Carolina State and Miami.
It would have been nice if they could have also sneaked out of Wake Forest with a victory, but don't get greedy. I'm guessing that nobody was banking on them leading the conference a third of the way through the schedule.
No sense looking too far down the road either, because it could get pretty bumpy. The lack of an impact nonconference win means the Terps probably will have to finish 9-7 or better if they still want to be playing in late March. That might not sound that tough after a 4-1 start, but let's see where they are after playing four of their next six games in hostile environs -- including at Duke and N.C. State.
For that matter, let's see what they look like when they come out of the Tigers' den.
Even in this year of unusual parity in the ACC, there's no place like home.
Listen to Peter Schmuck when he hosts "Sportsline" on WBAL (1090 AM) and check out "The Schmuck Stops Here" at baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog.