The pain was real in Nashville this weekend for Kentucky fans

Music City, USA. Kentucky basketball’s home away from home has been the epicenter of fun for years, especially for special occasions like the SEC tournament and high-profile regular-season games. This weekend, however, instead of the usual upbeat party music, it would have been much more appropriate for Nashville bands to play crying-in-your-beer songs to the horde of blue who looked as lost as the Wildcat players did on the court in a 94 – 59 drubbing that wasn’t even as close as the 35-point differential would indicate.

A swell of Kentucky residents made the drive across the border to watch their team, some of whom have season tickets to Rupp. However, for a large chunk of this group, this might be their only time watching Kentucky play all season. A lot of people treat these neutral-site games as an excuse for a vacation or a good reason to see their friends on that annual trip. Some, like me, will fly from across the country to make that happen.

I’ve been parlaying high-profile Kentucky basketball games into guys’ trips for going on two decades now. Each city, each site, each team brings out a slightly different version of the crowd, but the excitement is always there.

What I witnessed in Nashville was not sadness because Kentucky stinks at basketball. The mass of humanity that is Big Blue Nation on Broadway turned into zombies of soulless wanderers, dejected to the point of having no choice but to embrace their humiliation.

Kentucky fans wanted to cheer so bad that they did so sarcastically

As much as the rational side of Kentucky fans’ brains had a sense of their impending fate, pre-game festivities baited everyone into believing, at least a little bit. Talking to fans up and down Broadway, some variation of the phrase, “We need this one bad, so these guys will step up tonight,” was the pep talk BBN gave each other to build confidence, and it kind of worked.

Kentucky fans filled up Bridgestone Arena like beer in a fresh keg at Tootsie’s. The sea of blue was begging, pleading for a reason to cheer and pretend the last few disappointing games were nightmares of the past. Instead, this Kentucky team showed that the nightmare may just be starting.

The only cheers in that area from the 15,000 or so Kentucky fans were of the sarcastic variety. Typically, fans reserve these facicious pops for a referee who finally calls a foul on the opposing team after a slew of bad calls against Kentucky. However, when Denzel Aberdeen made the Wildcats’ first field goal with 11:04 remaining in the first half to cut the lead to 14, the crowd erupted in a thunderous tongue-in-cheek celebration.

“Watch out for these guys!” yelled one particularly angry fan behind me. Okay, that’s not true. That fan was actually me.

And then came the boos

My father always taught me not to boo Kentucky players. After all, these are just student-athletes trying their best. Sorry, Dad, but I did not fully heed that advice on Friday night. Sure, these 18 to 22-year-olds are in college, but in the era of NIL, these are professional basketball players. But forget about the money aspect for a moment. That is a rant for later.

Kentucky fans did not boo because their team’s shots weren’t falling. They did not boo because the ‘Cats happened to run into a great team playing well and got dominated on an off night. The boos were deeper-seated than that. They were the outpouring of disappointment into what this Kentucky product has become, a disheveled collection of apathetic, disgruntled egos who looked like having to take a private plane to Nashville for a nationally televised basketball game was an inconvenience to their weekend plans.

If I had to justify the boos to my anti-jeering father, I’d say something like, “You know how you weren’t necessarily mad at me for wrecking the car when I was 16? Instead, you were disappointed that I wasn’t truthful about how it happened, and how this trend of dishonest occurrences was not something you would tolerate. The booing on Friday night in Nashville was Big Blue Nation’s expression of that exact sentiment.” I’m not suggesting Kentucky is being dishonest, but the core frustration is more than losing games.

I’d like to think I turned a corner from my short-lived teenage rebellion phase, so hopefully Kentucky can do the same. But right now, Big Blue Nation is in full-throated disappointment mode.

The post-game atmosphere was just as bad as the in-game experience

I’ve been around enough neutral site losses to know sadness. Losing in the Champions Classic or CBS Sports Classic often brings up a group of sulking Cats fans, frustrated yet again that this team could not pull off a win.

Friday was different.

Some fans left the arena early, intentionally averting their gaze from the disaster in front of them. However, the vast majority stuck around until the final buzzer, purposefully soaking up all the misery and wallowing in the humiliation. Steps away from the Johnny Cash museum, Kentucky fans focused on the pain, the only thing that was real.

The post-game atmosphere on Broadway was not one of unhappiness because Kentucky lost a basketball game. It was one of laughable embarrassment. Many fans I commiserated with could only joke about the current state of this team, likely so they wouldn’t cry. People were looking for answers, some kind of justification for how this group of guys could go from dominating Purdue in an exhibition game to looking like they had never held a basketball before against any meaningful competition.

But there aren’t reasons to be this bad, none that make sense. And none that this coaching staff will tell us.

All of this leaves fans, so many of whom tie their identity to Kentucky basketball, searching not only for on-court fixes, but ways to course-correct the Titanic, which is heading straight toward an iceberg. Then again, maybe the ship already hit it, leaving fans scrambling, just trying not to drown.