Former Allen County High School basketball coach James Bazzell – who coached some of the region’s all-time best players and was later inducted into the KHSAA Hall of Fame – died Wednesday at age 83 at his home in Scottsville.

Bazzell compiled a remarkable record of 417-89 during his tenure at Allen County High. From 1949-66, Bazzell won six regional titles and coached future Western Kentucky stars Jim McDaniels and Norm Weaver.

“Extremely demanding and extremely successful,” Weaver said this morning with a chuckle. “I never played on a high school team that didn’t go to state. You were gonna play the game the way he wanted or you weren’t gonna play at all, because he knew how to do it.

“He was very easy to play for. You didn’t have to worry about thinking. You just played. The thing was – we are a team. He stressed that extremely hard, that as long as we do it together, it’s gonna be hard to stop us.”

Bazzell was inducted into the Dawahares/KHSAA Hall of Fame in 1993, the Kentucky Coaches Court of Honor in 2003 and was the initial inductee into the Allen County-Scottsville Athletic Hall of Fame.

“He was the greatest,” McDaniels said this morning. “He was the greatest without a doubt. He was the first coach that told me I could be somebody – be a player. He prepared his teams well to play the whole game hard at both ends of the court and run the plays the way they should be run.

“It’s tough. You loved him very much. He was very much a father figure to many ballplayers, including myself.”

Weaver echoed those sentiments.

“Coach Bazzell was a strange mixture,” he said. “I’ve never known anybody harder on me, to push me harder. I’ve never known anybody to be kinder and better to me as a person. So I’ll always remember that. Extremely hard on you but extremely kind to you off that court. He’d do anything for you. Anything. If you were one of his – anything.”

Bazzell also served as Allen County Schools superintendent from 1966-90, and the James E. Bazzell Middle School on New Gallatin Road in Scottsville was named in his honor in 1990.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete but are under the direction of T.W. Crow & Son Funeral Home in Scottsville.