10 LETTERS = 42 SCRABBLE POINTS IF YOU CAN SPELL THIS GUY’S NAME DO IT YOURSELF: CUT OUT THE TILES BELOW AND SPELL!

By Ron Kantowski

Friday, Aug. 24, 2007 | 7:42 a.m.

Although you won't find it in the NCAA record book, if you could spell Mike Krzyzewski's name in a game of Scrabble, you'd receive 42 points - 5 for K, 1 for R, 10 for Z, 4 for Y, 10 for Z, 1 for E, 4 for W, 1 for S, 5 for K and 1 for I.

You'd also be cheating, because there are only 1 K and one Z in a bag of Scrabble tiles.

The only way you can spell Krzyzewski is by using the two blanks. Those don't have point values, so you'd receive only 27 points.

Unless, of course, you laid Coach K's surname down on one of the triple-letter or triple-word squares. In that case, better get out the calculator.

Your mission, Mr. Phelps - and FIBA Americas basketball fans - should you decide to accept it, is to spell the name of Team USA's basketball coach.

You know, that Coach K guy.

Almost everybody I spoke to during Wednesday's first-round games at the Thomas & Mack Center - with the exception of the guy with the two Uruguayan flags sticking out of his back pocket, who responded to my question as if I had asked for his last Bud Light - willingly accepted the mission.

Accomplishing it was another matter.

Most couldn't get past the first syllable before they were left hanging upside down from the ceiling like Tom Cruise in the movies.

They looked at me as if I were Vanna White, which, I must admit, is a bit of a reach. Only they wanted to buy another consonant instead of a vowel.

"K-R-Y-C-I-E-S-K-I," said Sal Pizzo, one of the ushers on an empty concourse during the Uruguay vs. Panama game. Pizzo thought he had nailed it. Sort of.

A little farther down the concourse, a woman named Dawn was folding replica Team USA jerseys with LeBron James' name and number on them when I popped the question.

"You see it a million times on TV," she said.

"Z-A-C-I-E-W-A-S-I."

Well, maybe you see it a thousand times on TV. Or a hundred. But never like that.

"I know it's K-R-something," said Zack Lichtic of Layton, Utah, who professed to being a Coach K fan. I told him to lower his voice, because some of us around here still remember the 1991 Final Four.

"K-R- ...S?" Lichtic guessed.

(Insert wrong answer buzzer noise here.)

Time to give the ladies a try. "Do you know who Coach K is?" I asked Tasha Secord of Reno, who was wearing a Team USA T-shirt. "Yup," she said.

"Do you know how to spell his name?"

"K-Y- ... I really have no idea. I guess that's why he's Coach K."

I spotted Daryl Hidrosollo lingering by a display case with Larry Johnson's picture in it. When I asked the Las Vegan to spell Coach K's name, he confidently stepped to the line, as if he were Bobby Hurley shooting a 1-on-1 against Clemson.

"K-R-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I."

Oooh, so close. Give Hidrosollo credit for at least drawing iron. But his best shot clanged off the rim, too.

Tony Morales was wearing a Cubs cap and said he had just moved here from Chicago, which is also where Coach K is from. So I figured he might be the one who could spell his name.

"K-Y-R-I-S ... not even close."

No polish sausage for you, Tony.

Maybe I'd have to go north of the border for a winner. Scott Ramsay of Vancouver was sitting behind one of the benches, still hoping against hope that Steve Nash might show up to hoop it against the Brazilians, when I asked him to participate in my one-word spelling bee.

"K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-V-S-K-I."

Good try but wrong, eh? I was going to tell Ramsay that it was just like "Gretzky," only with an extra Z and an extra K. And a couple of other extra letters. But, like every other Canadian I've met, he seemed like a nice guy, so we just made jokes about the Las Vegas Posse's short-lived tenure in the Canadian Football League, instead.

On and on it went. I must have asked 100 people - or nearly everybody in attendance - how to spell Coach K's name. Nobody could do it. And by the time I got to where Johnny Dawkins, one of his former point guards, was sitting courtside, he had gone for popcorn.

My last resort was to stop at Bar Portal No. 8 on the way out, where Mark Gonzales was unloading case after case of beer, probably because the Canada game was going to start in about three hours, and he wanted to be ready when the McKenzie Brothers arrived. Plus, I figured, bartenders know everything.

"S-H-U ..."

I stopped him right there, telling him I wasn't looking for the phonetic spelling.

But then his partner chimed in from the back of the bar.

"K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-Y," he said proudly before stepping forward to receive his prize.

Wrong. I told him. It's spelled with an "I."

"Y," he said.

"I," I said right back.

We were starting to sound like Abbott and Costello before he confessed he had cheated, and was reading from the official program.

"Lemme see that," I said.

There it was, in black and white.

"K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-Y."

The official program had spelled it wrong.

THE ANSWER: "K-R-Z-Y-Z-E-W-S-K-I."