"Dutch" Made Mark On And Off Court For KU

A.C. "Dutch" Lonborg was a basketball All-American at Kansas in 1919, but he made an even bigger mark on Jayhawk and college basketball history later, in the 1950s and 1960s. Lonborg, who played baseball and football in addition to basketball at KU, served as KU's director of athletics from 1950 to 1964. A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law, Lonborg was instrumental in organizing the first NCAA Tournament while he was the coach at Northwestern. He later served as chairman of the NCAA basketball tournament committee and is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

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The Jayhawks wound up 7-9 overall and 5-9 in the Valley – good enough, or bad enough, for a fifth place finish.  It would be their lowest conference finish until the 1947-48 season.

Trouble hit before the season even started.  Howard “Scrubby” Laslett had been elected as captain for the 1918-19 team and would have been only the second Jayhawk to serve as both football captain and basketball captain the same year.  But by the time the season started, Laslett was in France with a tank battalion and senior center Kelsey Matthews was chosen as captain in his place.

Three coaches in the athletic department and Naismith, the director pf physical education, were on leave for service in the war.  Hamilton had taken over Naismith’s duties, a position he resigned on Feb. 25, 1919, with perhaps a glimpse of what was to come: “The department of athletics has been working under serious handicap since the declaration of war,” he said.  “An elephant’s job was thrown upon my shoulders.”

Standouts John Bunn and Arthur Lonborg began their KU careers that season but were not enough to pull the Jayhawks from the lower division of the Conference.  On June 10, 1919, Hamilton officially resigned from coaching, turning his attention to his car dealership.