NAHSVILLE —  Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl had a notion earlier in the Southeastern Conference Tournament that Tennessee’s fans may be the league’s best.”I understand that we’ve got some wonderful visitors from the north that probably rival Tennessee as the greatest basketball fans in the country,” Pearl said.Pearl, inevitably, showed up to Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Saturday for a rude awakening. In Tennessee’s very own backyard, it was the Cats – not the Volunteers – who had Saturday’s home-court advantage.Nearly 80 percent of the 19,123 fans at Saturday’s session donned blue and white, turning Bridgestone Arena into a raucous Rupp Arena of the South. The Cats rode the electricity of the crowd in their 74-45 thumping of rival Tennessee.”The crowd definitely helps,” junior forward Patrick Patterson said. “There was a lot of blue yesterday and even more blue today and hopefully there will be a lot more tomorrow. The crowd definitely helps. It basically feels like a home game when you look into the crowd and you see all that blue and only a little color of the opponent.”It put to bed some of Pearl’s misconstrued notions that Tennessee might have the best fans in the SEC. This weekend’s Kentucky turnout has easily reaffirmed Kentucky’s long proclaimed title as the most passionate college basketball fan base in the country.Pearl insisted after the game that Tennessee had “enough fans in there that, when (they) made (their) runs, (they) could hear (their) people in the building,” but it was hard to even hear the Tennessee band play its unofficial fight sing, “Rocky Top,” during the first semifinal game.During each and every single timeout, the Tennessee band, to the best of its efforts, tried to blare “Rocky Top” throughout the arena. And every time, without a moment’s hesitation, the rowdy Kentucky fans drowned it out with chants of “Go Big Blue!””It’s unbelievable,” UK head coach John Calipari said of the support. “The blue dust is everywhere. It’s incredible.”Tickets have become the hot commodity this weekend in Nashville. Their dollar value on the streets of the Music City have rivaled that of gold. Online, tickets are being sold for hundreds of dollars, and on street corners a four-day package at center court have reportedly gone for thousands of dollars.UK fans have made no hesitation in buying them to watch their team play.Calipari, who at one time said the SEC Tournament wasn’t that important in the big picture of the NCAA Tournament, has taken the showing to heart and said he feels a responsibility to the fans to lead UK to its first tournament title since 2004.”When I see a building full of blue fans who paid a lot of money for the tickets … to watch our team play, well then you kind of feel as a coach you owe it to them to give it your best.”There are so many Kentucky fans in town that it’s logistically impossible for everyone to get into Bridgestone Arena. Instead, thousands of fans have painted Broadway Street blue, turning the Music City’s party epicenter into Big Blue on Broadway.The Kentucky support has been so large and so decisive that UK’s competition for the SEC championship, Mississippi State, is worried. Following the Bulldogs’ 62-52 victory over Vanderbilt, MSU head coach Rick Stansbury pleaded with the league’s remaining fans to stick around and pull for the Bulldogs.”I would hope too all those fans that are still left here, we need all those fans for us,” Stansbury said. “Put it in your paper. We need them cheering for us. Vanderbilt, we need all those fans. (We need) Tennessee fans (too). I’m sure they will be, Tennessee will, if they don’t go home.”Stansbury can plead and beg all he wants, but Sunday is going to be a decisive home-court advantage for UK. As Peal and the rest of the nation once again learned on Saturday, the Kentucky fan base takes a backseat to no one.