Over behind the Kansas State bench, a man held a sign that proclaimed Allen Fieldhouse as “Bramlage East.”

Who could argue?

When Kansas State’s nationally ranked women’s basketball team plays 90 miles down the Kansas River, it’s like the Wildcats never left Bramlage Coliseum, their home in Manhattan.

“Our fans are incredible,” K-State junior Kendra Wecker said. “I didn’t think we’d have that many being the middle of the week, but they were here for us, giving us standing ovations when we came out.”

Hard telling exactly how many K-State fans were on hand Wednesday night to watch K-State’s sixth straight win — most of them lopsided — over their geographic rival. Kansas University officials pegged the crowd at 4,564. The Jayhawks have been averaging about 1,000 fans a game, so there were probably about 3,500 purple-clad K-Staters.

Putting it another way, K-State had about a 3.5-to-1 advantage in decibels.

If there is any other place in the Big 12 Conference where a visiting team has so glaring a crowd advantage, I’m unaware of it.

There have been a couple of Kansas-Nebraska football games at Memorial Stadium where the Cornhuskers may have had the same number of fans in the stands as the Jayhawks, but never a 3.5-to-1 edge.

Notable, too, about the K-State fans is that they arrived early Wednesday. The only reserved seats in Allen Fieldhouse for women’s games are in the section behind the Kansas bench. Every other seat is fair game, and there were purple-clad patrons everywhere else in the lower sections.

Among the new promotions at KU men’s and women’s basketball games this season has been a hand-held, high-powered, bazooka-like machine that propels T-shirts high into the upper deck. That projectile was never more necessary than Wednesday night because three-fourths of the lower level wasn’t interested in a KU T-shirt.

6Sports video: KU falls to 2-8 in Big 12, lose to ‘Cats 81-51 ‘Cats rock Jayhawks Woodling: KSU fans turn fieldhouse into Bramlage East

Looking around, I kept wondering if Willie the Wildcat would show up. Mascots don’t go on the road in the Big 12, but this was hardly a road game for K-State.

“It was very difficult,” said KU freshman Lauren Ervin, who experienced the KSU phenomenon for the first time. “It was a hard adjustment.”

Truth to tell, though, Kansas State would have won without a single KSU booster in the seats. The Wildcats are that good. They didn’t do anything spectacular Wednesday night and they didn’t have any real sinking spells. They just did their thing and won by 30.

Kansas couldn’t shoot with the ‘Cats, Kansas couldn’t defend with the ‘Cats and Kansas couldn’t maintain the same floor presence. If there were a capacity 16,300 fans on hand — all of them hollering in support of the Jayhawks — K-State still would have won. Those K-State girls — may of them from small Kansas towns — can flat play ball.

All-American senior center Nicole Ohlde — the best thing out of Clay Center since, uh, clay — performs with such grace and skill that she scored 23 points, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked two shots without seemingly breaking into a sweat.

Kendra Wecker, the Wildcats’ other marquee player, displays such a variety of shots and moves it makes you wonder if Marysville, her hometown, will turn out another player that good within the next 100 years.

It’s no secret K-State’s success in women’s basketball over the last three years — fueled largely by Ohlde and Wecker — has corresponded with KU’s slide from consistent 20-or-more-win seasons into an unprecedented string of three straight losing years.

Today marks coach Marian Washington’s second week away from the program for unspecified health reasons. When she left, Washington said she hoped to be back in two weeks, but interim coach Lynette Woodard reported Wednesday night that Washington was still being evaluated.

With Washington absent, with the Jayhawks headed for another losing season and with Lew Perkins, a man accustomed to a winning women’s program at UConn now in charge of KU athletics, women’s basketball on Mount Oread appears on the verge of winds of change of perhaps tornadic proportions.