THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE, March 29, 2015

The fan in the row behind us tapped me on the shoulder as he got up to leave with a few minutes left in his team's game the other night at the KFC Yum! Center.

"Good luck, Big Blue," he said.

The Christmas gift of a pullover that I received a few years ago turned out to be the clothing of choice to last week's annual forage to the first weekend of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which this season took us to Louisville, Ky.

The fact it was a blue pullover didn't seem like a big deal during the planning stage of the trip - it was clean, it fit, so it made the trip.

That the blue bore an uncanny resemblance to the main color of that undefeated college basketball program in that state did not dawn on me until later.

Talk about "unintended consequences."

Didn't matter that there were no "Kentucky" or "UK" logos on the pullover - in fact, there were no logos of any kind. That didn't stop people from sidling up to me on the way to the arena, as if I was one of them.

So, I rolled with it.

Besides, it seemed a better idea to infiltrate Big Blue Nation than to battle them.

WITH GOOD reason.

With the exception of the sections dedicated to fans of the participating teams, Kentucky fans filled the rest of the massive lower bowl of the arena last Thursday and Saturday. Which seemed a little curious, as Kentucky wasn't assigned to play at the Louisville site until the previous Sunday.

Did thousands of Big Blue Nation fans guess right last October, when the "pre-sale" for tickets took place, that Kentucky would be assigned to Louisville to open the tourney?

Meanwhile, our group of fans, who picked Louisville because none of us had ever been there, took part in the aforementioned pre-sale last October, but were relegated to the upper bowl of the 22,090-seat arena - surrounded by more Kentucky fans, who scarfed up much of the remaining upper bowl tickets as well in the days leading up to the tourney.

Perhaps there was a secret pre-pre-sale?

In any event, the result was a couple of essentially "home" games for Kentucky - something you rarely see anymore at NCAA sites.

Other than maybe Gonzaga playing in Seattle, usually these crowds for the first weekend of games are largely neutral - each team has its own pocket of fans, and the others are just there to see some college basketball, and decide who to root for once the games start.

Not so in this case.

This was basically Rupp Arena West - Big Blue Nation pretty much drowned out the scant cheering sections of the two teams it vanquished, Hampton and Cincinnati. Hampton didn't give the neutral fans much reason to join in, but if Cincinnati had hit some more shots, it would have picked up a few more followers from the "undecided" crowd.

Aside from being annoyed that Big Blue Nation wound up with most of the good seats, it was an entertaining change to watch "home" fans at a supposed neutral-site NCAA games.

Some of them actually seemed to be sweating out Kentucky's 23-point cakewalk over Hampton.

"Let 'em play," one guy screamed, after a foul was called on Kentucky, which at the time led by 30.

Then, alluding to the lateness of the game (it was past midnight, as the game tipped off after 10 p.m. local time), he added, "do you know what time it is?"

One of the biggest cheers came during the game before the Kentucky-Hampton game, when the ball rolled out of play - only to be retrieved by Kentucky coach John Calipari, who was catching a glimpse of his team's opponent for the next round.

A block or two up the street from the arena, someone had put up a tent in a parking lot - next to the lot charging $40 per car - and was selling merchandise saluting Kentucky's march toward an undefeated season.

ACROSS THE river from Louisville is Indiana.

One fine morning, it seemed a good idea for a walk across the pedestrian bridge - how often do you get to walk from one state to another, and only have to cover a couple of miles?

One person in our group declined.

"Indiana wants me. Lord, I can't go back there," 'Jim' said, channeling his inner R. Dean Taylor, whether he knew he was doing so at the time or not.

Judging from the traffic on the bridge, several others were willing to take that risk, however - though as you reached the other end of the bridge, there was no sign welcoming you to the adjoining state.

Maybe Indiana didn't really want us.

I WAS tempted to ask some of the longtime Kentucky fans if it felt any different being part of a Big Blue Nation that rooted for the current philosophy of "here today, gone next year" way of constructing a team.

But I remembered that "fan" is short for "fanatic", so I thought better of it.

Besides, whether you preferred the Adolph Rupp way, or the Joe B. Hall way, or the Rick Pitino way, or the current, John Calipari way - or the way Gonzaga does it, with a mixture of four- and five-year players, transfers and foreign players - maybe as a fan it doesn't matter, as long as your team is winning.

Cincinnati decided its best chance was to goon it up with Kentucky - and it worked, to a degree. It wasn't pretty to watch, and barely resembled basketball at times, but it got the Wildcats flustered. Rather than squeezing the basketball, Kentucky players looked like they wanted to strangle their opponents - including one in particular, the one who was tossed from the previous game for launching his elbow at a Purdue player. But the Bearcats couldn't make enough shots to stay close, and fell by 13.

That gave West Virginia the blueprint to beat Kentucky in the regional semifinal in Cleveland - until one of its freshman guards pulled the ultimate freshman mistake of guaranteeing a Mountaineer victory. After his team suffered a 39-point shellacking, that same frosh was reduced to Marshawn Lynch-type answers.

"Kentucky played good" was his response to every question.

GUESSING THE tent with all the "undefeated season" merchandise accompanied Big Blue Nation to Cleveland this weekend, where Notre Dame was the latest to try - and fail - to hand Kentucky its first loss.

That leaves it up to Arizona to try to topple the Wildcats in the Final Four - or perhaps Gonzaga brings the tent down on Big Blue Nation a week from Monday night.

Either way, I can't wait for my next pullover for Christmas.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.