Blame it on the polar vortex because Northwestern’s shooting percentage is plunging like the temperatures throughout the Midwest.

Coming off their worst offensive performance of the season at Wisconsin, the Wildcats were barely better in an ugly 70-52 road loss to Maryland on Tuesday night.

Northwestern shot 31 percent from the floor and 21.7 percent from beyond the arc against the Terrapins, but it was worse than that for most of the game until things got out of control and Maryland lost interest on defense late in the game.

Northwestern scored a season-low 46 points and shot 29.6 percent from the floor in its last game, a 62-46 loss to Wisconsin.

The Wildcats actually hit their first two shots at the start of the game against Maryland. However, they then missed their next 12 in a row and went 7:23 without a basket before Ryan Greer converted a layup to make the score 15-7. That early cold spell was indicative of what Northwestern would experience all night.

Maryland’s turnovers kept Northwestern in the game for a while, but eventually, ice-cold shooting did the Wildcats in. They trailed 33-22 at the half and Maryland just kept adding to the lead in the second half as Northwestern never found any semblance of an offense. The Wildcats couldn’t get any penetration, Dererk Pardon was neutralized by Maryland big man Bruno Fernando and they had to settle for long jumpers and 3-pointers that didn’t have much of a chance of going down.

Maryland’s lead reached 20 after a Jalen Smith dunk made it 50-30 with 10:55 left. The rest of the game was largely an academic exercise as the outcome was already decided.

Anthony Gaines led the way with a career-high 18 points for Northwestern, while Pardon added 14. Those two accounted for more than 60 percent of NU’s scoring. The remaining eight players scored just 20 points and went 8 for 35 (22.8 percent) from the floor.

Fernando paced Maryland with game highs of 22 points and 10 rebounds, while Smith contributed 14 and 9.

Here are our three pointers on the loss that dropped Northwestern’s record to 12-9 overall and 3-7 in the Big Ten:

The Cats can’t shoot: Northwestern fans used to wear “Make Shots” T-shirts during the Bill Carmody years when the Wildcats struggled in the shooting department. Maybe the Wildside student section can resurrect them this season. Something needs to change.

In the first half, the Wildcats shot 22.6 percent (7 of 31) from the floor and a microscopic 15.4 percent (2 of 13) from beyond the arc. Only Pardon and Gaines had more than one basket (they had two apiece), as Vic Law, A.J. Turner and Ryan Taylor were a combined 1-for-11.

In the second half, the Wildcats hit three of their first 12 shots and their shooting percentage went up.

The Wildcats missed 3s, they missed midrange jumpers, they missed layups, they missed putbacks. They missed contested shots and open ones. For much of the game, players would pass and dribble around the perimeter until the shot clock ran down and they were forced to chuck up a shot – that missed almost 70 percent of the time.

Law was AWOL again: Law is still Northwestern’s leading scorer on the season, but he has been MIA offensively in the four games he’s played since returning from his ankle injury.

The fifth-year senior hit just 2 of 8 shots, including 1 of 5 from distance, for 5 points. Unlike other games, he didn’t do much else to affect the game, finishing with three rebounds and no assists.

In the last four games, Law is 7 of 37 from the floor for a shooting percentage of 18.9 percent. Those are dreadful numbers for the player who was supposed to lead the team this season.

Law’s ankle may still be bothering him, but he didn’t play well in a number of games before the injury, either. He hasn’t shot better than 33.3 percent in any game since playing Columbia on Dec. 30. That’s also the last time he scored more than 13 points in a contest.

For Northwestern to close out the season on a positive note, Law has to return to being Law.

This seems to be more than a slump: There were some positives for Northwestern against the Terrapins. The Wildcats turned the ball over just seven times and came up with seven steals. Gaines played well on both sides of the ball and, if he isn’t already, is quickly becoming Northwestern’s best player.

The Wildcats are a good team defensively and they don’t turn the ball over very often. But all of that won’t matter much if they continue to miss shots at their current rate. They have shot below 40 percent for four straight games – amazingly, they won one of them, over Indiana – so their performance on Tuesday night was less about Maryland’s defense than it was Northwestern’s offense.

Northwestern will have a good chance to win two of the next three games: they face Penn State, a team still searching for a Big Ten win, next. Then, after a tough road contest at Iowa, they come back home to play Rutgers, a team they already beat on the road.

After that, however, a win is difficult to envision unless their shooting numbers rise dramatically.