Bo Kimble, Ex-Loyola Marymount Star, Goes Coast to Coast Elaine Thompson/Associated Press Bo Kimble, right, once teamed with Hank Gathers on the high-scoring Loyola Marymount teams of the late 1980s. Kimble is now a volunteer assistant at Shoreline (Wash.) Community College, trying to help implement the system he thrived under. (AP) - As is the case most nights, only half of the gym bleachers are pulled out, and the popcorn machine is just as close to the court as the players sitting on the bench. Into this setting walks Bo Kimble, a former second-team all-American, an authority on the experiment taking place in this unlikely setting. He takes his seat four chairs down on the bench at Shoreline Community College, wearing black sweats and fresh off a plane from his home in Philadelphia. For the next two hours, Kimble claps encouragement, gives subtle instruction and watches glimpses of what he and his teammates once made famous at Loyola Marymount - though here, it is on a far smaller scale. Kimble is spending the winter working as a volunteer assistant, hoping to start a coaching career by helping this commuter college's basketball program implement Paul Westhead's "System," a sensation when Kimble and Hank Gathers ran it at Loyola Marymount in the late 1980s. Kimble is paid nothing, with the exception of a few private individual workouts arranged on the side. Most days, he's on campus for six to eight hours - and when his day ends, he retires to a nearby motel with just enough amenities to make it homey. It's not glamorous. Frankly, it's about as low on the coaching food chain as one can go. But it's at least a starting point. "People say in life you have to take two steps back to take 10 steps forward, and I think this is one of those opportunities," Kimble said. Plus, they're running the System. It would be more of a potential challenge if it was another system. This is the system that helped launch my N.B.A. career. Nearly 20 years removed from last playing an N.B.A. game, more than two decades since he was the top scorer in N.C.A.A. Division I, Kimble's arrival at this point in his life was as much a freakish occurrence as any methodically plotted path into coaching. An assist goes to the power of social media and an indication of just how seriously Kimble wants to get into coaching. Last spring, Shoreline Coach Greg Turcott decided that if he was going to give his players the best opportunity to put up the types of numbers that could catch the attention of four-year college coaches, installing an up-tempo, high-scoring style was the best option. He eventually settled on trying to match what Westhead mastered in his time at Loyola Marymount - 40 minutes of fast-break basketball with defense as an afterthought. So Turcott spent his spring and summer watching tapes of old L.M.U. games, from the days when Kimble and Gathers were two of the top scorers in the country. He talked with former Westhead assistants and tried to piece together a plan for making the System work on his level. "Conventional basketball, there is a small pool of guys that can play in that system," Turcott said, adding, "In this system there are a lot of guys other schools looked at and didn't think could fill those spots." But Turcott had no connection with Kimble, other than being an admirer of what Kimble and L.M.U. were able to do, especially in the 1989-90 season when the Lions became the darlings of the N.C.A.A. tournament after Gathers's sudden death. They reached the regional final before losing to the eventual national champion, Nevada-Las Vegas. Kimble led the nation in scoring, averaging 35.3 points a game. What he did have was an e-mail address that fell into the lap of Turcott's strength and conditioning coach. Joe Cario, also a volunteer. One e-mail explaining what Turcott was trying to accomplish eventually led to a series of phone calls, and once it was clear that none of Turcott's East Coast connections might lead to a coaching gig for Kimble, came the offer for Kimble to come out to Seattle. "I was thinking that maybe he'd be here two or three weeks," Turcott said. It's been really good for him to get in the gym and coach. On a recent Monday night, Shoreline is hosting nearby Everett. Maybe 300 people are in the stands, a good many hanging around after the women's game. Someone shows up 15 minutes into the first half with a vuvuzela, which is quickly confiscated after one loud honk.