Bobby Knight, one of college basketball’s signature coaches and a singular personality renowned for his tempestuousness and hubris, qualities that helped bring him to the pinnacle of his sport and also tainted his success, died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 83.

His death was announced in a statement on his website. It did not give a cause.

Mercurial and volatile, Knight was among the most polarizing characters in American sports. He was a brilliant coach who sought out intelligent players, deployed a ferocious man-to-man defense, extolled the virtues of precision passing and preached the necessities of boxing out, rebounding and never-ending hustle. Known as a principled perfectionist and a master teacher, he was also a driven competitor for whom losing was agony and a relentless motivator whose chief tool, it often seemed, was the anger-fueled rant.

He began his coaching career at the United States Military Academy and finished it at Texas Tech University. He coached the American Olympic basketball team to a gold medal in 1984.

But he found fame, glory and notoriety at Indiana University, where he was head coach for 29 years. An animated courtside stalker in a Hoosier-red sweater who became a statewide celebrity in a basketball-mad state, he raised the Indiana program to the national top tier while upholding academic standards — most of his players graduated — and avoiding the pay-for-play recruitment scandals that bedeviled many other schools.

A full obituary will follow.