‘I couldn’t miss.’ One of Lexington’s greatest high school basketball scorers dies at 85.

One of the finest scorers in Lexington’s high school basketball history has died.

Henry Burnette Bell Sr. , originally from Zion Hill, Kentucky, and a two-time inductee into the Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame , was 85 years old.

Bell, who went by the nickname “Red,” went on to play college basketball and later served as a longtime deputy in the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department. Along the way, Bell also developed into a widely respected high school and college basketball referee.

Bell’s playing days were most remembered for his performance on Dec. 17, 1957, when the 6-foot-1 guard for Lexington’s original Douglass High School scored a boys city record 54 points in a 108-65 win over Lincoln Institute of Simpsonville — a mark achieved before the 3-point arc was introduced to high school basketball.

“I couldn’t miss; I was radar that night,” Bell told the Kentucky High School Athletic Association for a story about Douglass in 2017. “Coach took me out after three quarters or I probably would’ve had 75 or 80 points.”

Bell’s record remained untouched until Feb. 14, 1989, when David DeMarcus scored 59 points for Sayre in a 119-36 win over Millersburg Military Institute.

Bell, who played at Douglass from 1955-58, averaged 28 points per game over his final two high school seasons. In 1955, Bell helped lead Douglass to runner-up finishes in the Kentucky High School Athletic League state tournament and the ensuing national tournament. At that time, all-Black high schools like Douglass were not allowed to play in the KHSAA state tournament.

In 1957, Bell’s Douglass team became the first all-Black school to compete in Lexington’s 43rd District Tournament

“You know that 19-foot line they’ve got now?” Bell told the Herald-Leader’s Mike Fields in 1989. “We wouldn’t have had to come close to the line. We were shooting far behind that.”

After playing college ball at Jackson State, Bell began his basketball officiating career in 1974 and worked the boys and girls Sweet 16 state tournaments several times. He was inducted into the KHSAA Hall of Fame in 1992.

Bell was inducted into the Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame in 2022 as a member of the 1956 Douglass team. This year, Bell was inducted again in recognition of his accomplishments as an individual athlete.

Herald-Leader Staff Writer Jared Peck contributed to this article.