In 1962, Al Shields was sitting in the office of Northeastern University basketball coach Dick Dukeshire when a professor walked in and asked Dukeshire if he knew anyone interested in supervising the intramural program at the nearby Bentley School of Accounting and Finance.

“Duke looked at me and said, ‘There’s your man,’ and there I was involved in coaching,’’ Mr. Shields recalled in a 1965 Globe interview.

That was the beginning of his 29-year run as the first athletic director and men’s basketball coach at what would become Bentley University.

“Al was the cornerstone of the Bentley athletic program,’’ said Bob DeFelice, who was hired as Bentley’s first – and still only – head baseball coach in 1968, when the campus relocated to Waltham, and who succeeded Mr. Shields as athletic director in 1991. “He was professional in his approach, detailed, and on top of everything – and extremely, but quietly, competitive.’’

Mr. Shields, who was also the founding commissioner of what is now the Northeast-10 Conference, died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease Tuesday in the Billerica Crossings assisted living facility. He was 80 and lived in Burlington.

Mr. Shields spearheaded an expansion from five to 19 varsity sports – including football and hockey and a growing list of women’s sports – during his tenure as Bentley’s athletic director. A baseball field was built in 1970, and the Dana Physical Education Center, Bentley’s first on-campus home for athletics, opened in 1973.

The fieldhouse in Dana is named after Mr. Shields.

Barbara Stevens, hired by Mr. Shields 31 years ago and now the winningest coach in Division 2 women’s basketball, said Mr. Shields “was ahead of the curve in providing our scholarships and assistant coaches, and I owe him a lot.’’

She added that he “was a supportive mentor who let me be the coach I wanted to be. He ran a tight ship, but when the work day was over he enjoyed getting together with his staff, and he loved talking basketball.’’

In his 15 seasons as basketball coach, his teams went 258-106, appeared in five NCAA and two NAIA tournaments, and had a superb run of 26-, 24-, and 23-win seasons in the early 1970s.

Two of his greatest players from that era were brothers and Bentley Hall of Famers Bert and Brian Hammel. Bert later was head basketball coach for 36 years at Merrimack College. Brian, a two-time All-American point guard and a third-round pick of the Milwaukee Bucks, also embarked on a coaching career.

“Al made a heck of a lot out of nothing. He began with a dream and an idea,’’ said Brian Hammel, Bentley’s head coach for six seasons after Mr. Shields left the bench. “He was a player’s coach and he put you in a position to succeed.’’

Hammel recalled that during his first two seasons, before the Dana Center was built, players car-pooled to practices at their former home court at Waltham High School. “The land where the center is now was a swamp, and I remember the dump trucks coming in with piles of dirt to fill it in,’’ he said. “No matter how late we stayed around after a game, Al – who had a flair for marketing – would still be working in a small office that we called the ‘pigeon house’ before the center was built.’’

Jim Nelson, a retired basketball coach and athletic director at Suffolk University, said the “creativity, commitment, and tenacity’’ Mr. Shields demonstrated were the foundation of his success.

Mr. Shields, who has been inducted into the Bentley Athletic, New England Basketball, and Northeast-10 halls of fame, told the Globe in 1968 that he had to learn his job “every step of the way.’’ That included an unusual lesson at the outset of his coaching career, when his team was playing a game at a YWCA because Bentley had no court facilities.

“This nice little old lady came up to me in the first half and said, ‘You know the lights will be turned off at 10 o’clock?’ I said ‘sure,’ and forgot it,’’ he recalled in 1965. When 10 p.m. arrived, “the lights kept getting dimmer, and all of a sudden the gym was in complete darkness.’’

A three-sport athlete who played basketball at Somerville High School, Elwood Shields was a son of Archie Elwood Shields and the former Claire Lambert.

A psychology major, he graduated from Northeastern in 1959. Mr. Shields played basketball there and stayed on as freshman basketball coach for Dukeshire, who died in 2012 and was a lifelong friend. Mr. Shields also was sports information director at Northeastern and coached at Boston’s Don Bosco Technical High School and Christopher Columbus High School.

Mr. Shields met Donna Torno of Holyoke when she was a student at Fisher Junior College. They married in 1961.

“He was easy to talk to, considerate of others, and had a calming nature,’’ said his wife, who added that despite his busy schedule at Bentley, Mr. Shields made it a priority to watch their three sons play basketball at Burlington High School. “They could look into the stands and Al was always there for them,’’ she said.

Their son Kyle of Burlington said Mr. Shields “wanted to have the best basketball players growing up under his roof.’’

The family lived in a split-entry home, “and so for every stair we went up and down, he made us do 10 toe raises per stair,’’ Kyle said. “By the time we were freshmen in high school, we could dunk the ball because our legs were so muscular.’’

Mr. Shields hailed from a family of athletes. His brother Walter of Kiawah Island, S.C., was on the track teams at Somerville High and Boston College. Another brother, David of Winter Haven, Fla., ran track at Somerville High.

After leaving Bentley, Mr. Shields sold gym flooring for a Cincinnati-based company. He also had a passion for golf and the ocean and enjoyed courses and beaches on Cape Cod and in Naples, Fla.

In addition to his wife, son and brothers, Mr. Shields leaves two other sons, Mark of Bend, Ore., and David of Allston; a daughter, Allison Theirrien of Burlington; and 10 grandchildren. A funeral Mass will be said at 9 a.m. Saturday in St. Malachy Church in Burlington. Burial will be private.

Bob Fisher, a longtime Rockland High School basketball coach who is now basketball coach at Marshfield High School, was Mr. Shields’ first basketball captain at Bentley.

“Losing coach Shields was like losing my own father,’’ Fisher said. “His passion for the game became my passion. He took an interest in each and every one of his players, and even though we graduated he never left us. He was our coach for life.’’

Marvin Pave can be reached at marvin.pave@rcn.com.