Hershell West is an American former basketball player and coach. He played basketball at Eula D. Britton in his hometown of Rayville, Louisiana and won the Louisiana State AA Championship in 1959. Grambling State Tigers men's basketball head coach Fred Hobdy offered West and the four other Britton starters athletic scholarships to Grambling State after watching them play. West played college basketball for the Tigers for four years, where he won a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) championship in and was a two-time first-team All-Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) selection in 1962 and 1963. In 1962, he and six other Tigers players participated in a goodwill tour of Latin America.