Getting Scrabble-d over the NCAA Tourney

There it is, 6:45 p.m. Friday, NCAA Tournament South Region, NRG Stadium in Houston, looming ever so large with lots of consonants and an occasional vowel. Bringing back memories of my high school yearbook.

Duke vs. Utah.

Krzyzewski (Mike) vs. Krystkowiak (Larry).

It’s a Sweet 16 coaching matchup of which Scrabble dreams are made.

Duke is a 4½ point favorite on the early betting line. On the Hasbro line, the spread is even wider.

Hasbro is the company that manufactures Scrabble.

If you placed the little wooden tiles that spell Krzyzewski in your little wooden church pew letter-holder thingie, you’d be cheating. Because in Scrabble, you can only have seven letters at a time. And proper names are not allowed.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, you were playing by Jim Boeheim-at-Syracuse rules, and unlimited tiles and proper names were allowed, and you had a little wooden letter holder longer than Kentucky’s bench.

If you placed K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I on the Scrabble board, it would be worth 42 points.

If you put down K-R-Y-S-T-K-O-W-I-A-K, it would be worth only 29 points.

So make Duke minus-13 on the Hasbro line.

Never underestimate the power of the “Z” in a game of Scrabble. In Scrabble, the “Z” is like a deft ball handling point guard who can score. It’s like that Fred VanVleet guy from Wichita State. It’s worth 10 points.

(VanVleet went for 27 points against Indiana in the second round of March Madness, but that was mostly because the Hoosiers had too many blank tiles on the perimeter and under the basket.)

The catch is in Scrabble, you don’t want to get stuck with the “Z” at the end of the game. Especially if the opponent is Kentucky, and the Wildcats have all the double- and triple-word spaces covered.

The NCAA Tournament record for most points scored in a game is 61, by Notre Dame’s Austin Carr against Ohio U. in 1970 in Dayton, Ohio. If memory serves, it came at the expense of the Bobcats’ M-A-T-A-D-O-R (legal Scrabble word, 10 pts.) defense.

The Scrabble record for most points on a single play is 392, by Dr. Saladin Karl Khoshnaw in Manchester, England, in 1982.

Talk about rise and fire and count the basket.

The record-setting Scrabble word was caziques, which by definition means “native chiefs of West Indian aborigines.”

I think Gonzaga’s Mark Few once may have recruited a cazique to be his backup center, because the Zags have post players from all over the world.

Anyway, I would have challenged it.

Gonzaga’s starting center is Przemek Karnowski of Poland. Scrabble value (if you were playing by Boeheim rules): 44 points. The Zags’ big guy would even beat K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I, but only if he used his first name, too.

Mike Krzyzewski is almost as difficult to beat on the Scrabble board as he is in March Madness. Even J-O-H-N-C-A-L-I-P-A-R-I (26 pts.) comes up woefully short. Coach Cal wouldn’t draw iron against Coach K on the Scrabble board.

But not to fret, Runnin’ Utes fans.

According to this nifty Scrabble Word Builder Helper (sounds like something you’d find in the Batcave when the Riddler was in town) found on the Internet, 311 legal Scrabble words can be formed from K-R-Y-S-T-K-O-W-I-A-K, including one eight-letter dandy, taskwork, worth a solid 19 points.

You can spell only 82 legal Scrabble words from K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I. The longest is six letters, kyries, plural for a short Greek invocation or a former Duke point guard, worth 13 points.

Still, if I were K-R-Y-S-T-K-O-W-I-A-K, I might consider putting an extra “Z” or a “K” or an “X”, if I had one, on O-K-A-F-O-R. The big kid was a B-E-A-S-T vs. San Diego State.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.