Class of 1924: Basketball and Football

Joe Hutton was a forward on four championship Carleton basketball teams, and was four times named All-Conference forward. The teams he played on won 58 games and lost eight, including an undefeated season in 1923-24. He also captained the basketball team, won two football letters and found time to make Phi Beta Kappa.

Thought still regarded as one of Carleton’s greatest athletes, Joe is best known as the long-time successful basketball coach at Hamline University. Following five years of coaching at Northfield High School, Sioux Falls and Hopkins, he joined the coaching staff at Hamline and became athletic director in 1931. He also coached the Pipers in football for six years and in track for twenty.

In 35 years, Hutton-coached basketball teams won 19 conference titles, three National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championships and were three times NAIA runners-up. His teams won nearly 75% of all games during those years, and a near unbelievable 88% of their conference encounters. He coached and developed some of the finest small-college basketball players in Minnesota history, including Vern Mikkelsen, who later starred for the Minneapolis Lakers, and his son Joe Hutton, Jr.

In 1947 Hutton was elected president of the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball. He was the first basketball coach elected to the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1952, and was selected for the Minnesota Hall of Fame in 1958. In 1960 he was named recipient of the annual Builder Manhood Award. He was inducted as a charter member of the Hamline Hall of Fame in 1966.