Northwestern picked a bad time to play its worst game of the year.

The Wildcats, the last-place team in the Big Ten, were taking on No. 14 Michigan State, tied for first -- and on the road to boot, where they have yet to win a conference game this season. So no one was realistically expecting a victory on Wednesday night at the Breslin Center.

But no one was expecting them to get embarrassed, either. The Spartans went on a 20-2 run bridging the two halves to blow the game open, and they wound up with a 79-50 beatdown that wasn’t as close as the score indicated.

The loss was the fifth in a row and 10th in the last 11 games for the reeling Wildcats. And this one was the ugliest of the bunch by far. Michigan State’s largest lead was 36 before Northwestern scored the last seven points of the game.

How much of a laugher was it? Tino Malnati played almost two minutes for Northwestern, while coaches' sons Steven Izzo (son of MSU head coach Tom Izzo) and Jack Hoiberg (son of Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg) made rare appearances for the Spartans.

Pat Spencer scored 11 points to lead Northwestern, while Ryan Young and Robbie Beran contributed eight each.

Cassius Winston racked up 18 points to lead Michigan State, as he and Foster Loyer (12 points) hit four 3-pointers apiece. The Spartans dominated the boards, outrebounding Northwestern 44-27, including 15-6 on the offensive end.

While the hill Northwestern had to climb was big to start with, it looked like Mt. Everest after the Spartans jumped off to a 16-2 lead after a Loyer triple at the 13:11 mark.

The Wildcats, though, answered with a 13-2 run of their own to get back into the game. Eventually, after a Boo Buie 3-pointer, MSU’s lead was down to 26-22 with 2:27 left in the half. That’s when Michigan State started the run that changed the game.

The Spartans scored the last seven points of the half to take a 33-22 lead into the locker room at halftime. They then followed that up by scoring the first seven of the second half to get the lead up to 40-22 after an Xavier Tillman baseline dunk.

From there, the rout was on as the wheels came off for Northwestern’s offense. The Wildcats didn’t get their first second-half points until the 16:21 mark, when Young hit a second-chance layup. They didn’t score again until a Spencer layup with 10:55 left, when they had just 26 points after more than 29 minutes of play.

Here are our takeaways from the loss that dropped Northwestern to 6-14 overall and 1-9 in the Big Ten:

Frigid starts to each half doomed Northwestern: The Wildcats got a basket from Young to tie the game at 2. Then, MSU scored the next 14 points.

By the second media timeout, Northwestern was shooting 25% from the floor, got outrebounded 11-4, committed five turnovers and went 6:30 without scoring.

The Wildcats were able to bounce back from that horrific start, but they couldn’t climb their way out of the hole they dug to start the second.

Northwestern hit just one of its first 13 shots of the second half (that’s 8% shooting!) and committed five turnovers by the under 12 timeout. By then, the score was 46-24 and the game was over.

The Cats didn’t show much fight: While the Wildcats have won just one game this month, they kept most of the games close. That wasn’t the case tonight.

Once Northwestern got down by 20 in the second half, the team seemed to roll over and accept defeat rather than claw back as they have all season.

What’s more, the Wildcats’ execution went right out the window. BTN analyst Shon Morris had it right when he said that Northwestern’s performance in the second half “looks like an open gym.”

Pete Nance needs a reset: Northwestern’s sophomore forward had a night to forget, failing to score and committing five turnovers in just 23 minutes. He was 0-for-3 from the floor, and had five rebounds, two assists and two fouls.

Nance is now 2-for-10 for six points in the Wildcats’ last two games. Since scoring 14 points in back-to-back games in December, Nance has hit double-figures just twice in the last 10 games as his scoring average has fallen from 12.1 points per game to 8.7.

The most important thing for the Wildcats for the remainder of the season is for their young guys to show improvement. Nance seems to be regressing.

Collins should just burn the film: There’s not much teaching for head coach Chris Collins and his staff to do by watching this game again. The Wildcats were outplayed, outcoached, outhustled, outworked and outclassed.

Leading scorer Miller Kopp was just 1-for-9 from the floor, while Buie, still working out the kinks in his third game back from injury, went 2-for-9.

The Wildcats just need to flush this one and move on to Saturday night’s contest against Purdue at Welsh-Ryan Arena.