UK Plays to Nearly Big-Blue-Free Crowd During Rout of Stony Brook

I've seen UK fans show up in Hawaii when Kentucky was part of the Maui Invitational. They made quite a showing at UCLA in December's loss to the Bruins.

But Des Moines, Iowa? Fuhgeddaboutit!

Yep, the 'Cats were playing to a quiet crowd in their NCAA first-round game against Stony Brook which they won 85-57.

And that is unusual.

Kentucky's fan base is among the most well-traveled in all the land.

And it's Des Moines, not Tibet!

But here's what probably happened, according to UK Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart.

Since every school is limited to 550 tickets in the first round, those can go pretty quickly if a school's fans have a pretty good idea where a team will be seeded.

One and two seeds and, more often than not, three seeds usually get first round games close to campus, or as close as possible.

Well, Kansas has been playing one-seed basketball all season long and Des Moines is the closest opening venue to KU's campus.

So those students likely snagged those tickets early.

It's likely the same story with Indiana fans, although that was more of a crap shoot.

The Hoosier faithful probably anticipated a higher seed than the 5 that they got and thought that Des Moines would be available.

And as it turns out, they got Des Moines anyway.

That's the thing about NCAA Tournament tickets. If you want to get them early so you can be there for your team, you have to pretty good at anticipating where they're going to land.

I imagine Big Blue Nation thought it would be St. Louis.

So we'll see what happens. I mean, I GUESS that 550-per-school ticket allotment is still on the table.

And I suppose if Wildcat fans want to be there, they will get there.

We'll see when Kentucky takes on Indiana at approximately 4:15 Saturday afternoon.