Westhead Takes Over at George Mason : College basketball: Former Laker, Loyola Marymount coach promises continuation of fast-paced offense.

Seen a good 120-116 college basketball game lately?

Probably not.

There probably are various reasons why scoring is down in college ball the last couple of seasons, but the main one might be that the game’s foremost practitioner of fast-break-at-all-costs, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later basketball was, until Monday, sitting at home in Palos Verdes unemployed, getting paid by the Denver Nuggets not to coach.

That, of course, would be the Shakespeare-quoting ringleader of basketball’s greatest show on Earth, Paul Westhead, 54, who was hired Monday to coach for the next five years at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

George Mason fans are in for some wild times.

“We’re going to play so fast that you’re not even going to be able to see our shadows,” Westhead promised at a news conference.

When last a college coach, the architect of Loyola Marymount’s offense led the Lions to NCAA scoring records and a series of NCAA tournament and top-25 appearances.

But in the fall of 1990, Westhead took his fast-break system to the NBA to try to rebuild the undermanned Nuggets in his image, and college ball, with few exceptions, returned to its by-the-numbers approach.

In Westhead’s heyday, the only numbers anyone cared about were the ones that kept scoreboard operators’ heads spinning. During one 72-hour period in early 1990, for instance, Westhead’s Loyola Marymount team beat St. Mary’s, 150-119, flew to Baton Rouge and lost to Shaquille O’Neal-led Louisiana State in overtime, 148-141, then returned to Los Angeles the next day and beat San Francisco, 157-115.

But the death of scoring star Hank Gathers during a 1990 West Coast Conference tournament game and a subsequent rash of lawsuits bogged down Loyola’s program, and Westhead’s departure to the NBA signaled the passing of an era.

Westhead, though, remains a steadfast proponent of the 40-minute fast-break, full-court press style he honed at Loyola.

And, he said, he is not surprised that few coaches are running the system, although dozens of his peers jumped on the bandwagon for a while.

“My feeling was always that there was not going to be a revolution,” he said recently.

”. . . For one thing, coaches by and large are a very conservative group--they like the traditional ways, the traditional management you can have over a game. They have an instinct not to give up that apparent control. Our style looks like you’re just running.”

Part of the Westhead system that rankles coaches is giving up easy points to step up the game’s pace. Jim Harrick called such a pace “the monster” when he was at Pepperdine.

When Westhead took over a depleted Denver team--his third NBA tour of duty--and tried to run his system, the Nuggets were on the receiving end of some of the worst blowouts in NBA history. They finished 20-62.

The next season the Nuggets drafted 7-footer Dikembe Mutombo and Westhead slowed things to make Mutombo the focus of the offense.

The Nuggets were competitive until the end of the season, when Mutombo was injured, but finished 24-58. Westhead was released with a year left on his three-year contract.

Westhead has spent much of the time since conducting clinics around the world--still preaching the gospel of fast break.

“There’s no reason for me to have changed,” he says of his philosophy. “It’s a way to play that, if you can get your players into the groove, it’s very exciting. And one advantage is if you can get it going, and nobody else is doing it, it’s very difficult to play against.”

Westhead won a title with the Lakers in 1980 before being fired early in the 1981-82 season after players--notably Magic Johnson--complained that his new offense was, ironically, slowing things down too much.