By Buddy "Friday Night" Cobb, Williamson County Bureau
HERRIN, Ill. — Jeff Ferguson, former head basketball coach at Herrin High School and a Herrin Hall of Famer, has died at age 85, the Southern Illinoisan reports. He passed away earlier this week in Florida, as announced by his older daughter, Terri.
Ferguson is remembered by the Southern Illinoisan as another in a line of Southern Illinois coaching legends — men whose names get invoked on gym walls and in old-timers' conversations long after the final whistle. In a county where high school basketball still fills the bleachers on a Friday night, a coach who earns Hall of Fame status leaves more than a win-loss record behind. He leaves the players who came up under him, and the town that claimed him as its own.
— Compiled from reporting by the Southern Illinoisan.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."