As we enter the home stretch, we look into the San Jose State Spartans, a team who wound up as the #6 seed in the MWC Tournament a year ago, falling in the first round via shutout to Fresno State.
The Spartans
of the 2010s were a consistent conference title contender, having finished over .500 ever season from 2013 through 2019 under Peter Turner, the winningest coach in program history. Turner retired after the 2019 season, leading to the hire of longtime Cal associate head coach and current head coach, Tammy Lohmann.
Lohmann’s tenure began with a hot start to 2020, holding a 21-5 record before the season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, however, things have been a bit rough, to put it mildly.
The Spartans have yet to finish a season with a winning record since 2019. The Spartans have still managed to make the conference tournament two out of its three years, even making a miracle run to the title game in 2023, but have largely been nowhere near any sort of contending status since Lohmann’s first pandemic-shortened season.
Now, the Spartans enter 2026 without any sort of respect from their peers, as SJSU was just picked to finish last in the new 10-team MWC preseason poll. With their roster and schedule being as it is, that assessment may, unfortunately, not be too far off.
Schedule
The Spartans begin the 2026 season with arguably the hardest MTE of any team in the conference: the Stanford Invitational. Here, the Spartans will face off against preseason #20/19 Oklahoma State, two games against preseason #17/18 Stanford, and two games against fellow Bay Area rival Cal. All three of these teams were knocked out in NCAA Regional championship games in 2025. The Spartans are meant to be the jobbers in an extremely strong early-season MTE, which is never a place a team wants to find themselves in.
Next, SJSU will head back to San Jose to host the first of two Silicon Valley Classic events. Here, the Spartans will face UC Santa Barbara, a doubleheader with Illinois State, then Utah and preseason #25/22 Washington. The Huskies are obviously the headliner here, but the Gauchos are also a formidable foe, having advanced further than Washington last year in the Tournament, knocking out the MWC Champions, San Diego State, before falling to UCLA in the Regional Championship. However, the Spartans did beat the Gauchos head to head at a neutral site in 2025, so that is certainly worth considering here.
Next, the Spartans have their first light MTE of the season, traveling to San Luis Obispo, California, to take part in the Mustang Classic. Here, they will face Manhattan twice, then Sacramento State, Pacific, and hosts Cal Poly. Sacramento State was the only one of these teams that was not outright terrible in 2025, finishing with a 27-23 record, which is 11 more wins than any other team in this event.
Next, the Spartans head up to the Sacramento area for the Capital Classic, a joint event hosted by Sac State and UC Davis. Here, they will play at Sac State twice, at UC Davis, and against Sacred Heart in Sacramento. Sac State is once again the best team here, meaning this should be another good opportunity for the Spartans to pick up some nonconference wins.
Finally, the Spartans will host their second Silicon Valley Classic. Here, they will face doubleheaders against Santa Clara and Saint Mary’s. The Broncos are the better of the two, having won the WCC in 2025, falling immediately to new Mountain West member Grand Canyon in the Tucson Regional. Saint Mary’s also finished 2025 with a winning record, so this will be a rather tough MTE for SJSU to close out their slate.
The Spartans’ season will close with exclusively a slate of conference games: five away series and four home series. At home, the Spartans will face UNLV, Fresno State, San Diego State, and New Mexico. On the road, they will face GCU, Nevada, Colorado State, Utah State, and Boise State. This is a very tough schedule, as playing GCU, Nevada, and Utah State on the road is certainly sub-optimal. Their home slate is also no cakewalk, with their California rivals serving as their toughest challenges in front of their home crowd.
Overall, this schedule has some areas that are very tough for the Spartans, and others that are very easy. However, that unfortunately may not matter much, as the schedule they will face is far from SJSU’s biggest problem in 2026.
Hitting Core
A year ago, the Spartans were the worst-hitting team in the Mountain West Conference, posting a team-wide average of a ghastly .260. Their OPS was a conference-worst .724, and they ranked second-worst in runs, hits, and RBIs, ranking just ahead of lowly CSU in all three.
In response to this disastrous season at the plate, the Spartans made absolutely zero changes to the core in the offseason outside of acquiring freshmen. Ahmiya Noriega (.352, All-MWC First Team) and Reina Zermeno (.326) were the only consistent hitters the Spartans had in 2026, and both return for their respective senior seasons in the blue and gold. They will be joined by fellow senior Shay McDowell, whose .280 batting average a year ago couldn’t stop her from leading her team in RBIs with 28.
Aside from those three, there really is not much to talk about in terms of positive on-field performance. The Spartans’ third-best hitter was Aubrie Thomas, who graduated after the season, and most everybody else is coming back, which really is not a good thing, considering this core’s track record at the plate. The only other player of note to discuss is Taylor Chillingworth, whose main notoriety in 2025 was in being the conference’s absolute worst hitter, with a batting average of just .152 across 91 at-bats.
As the Spartans made zero additions to their hitting core in the transfer portal, this leaves me to discuss their freshmen, of which there are nine, a staggering number by modern college athletics standards. Most of these players don’t really give me much confidence in terms of immediate impact, save for Gabriella Sotelo. Sotelo is coming off of a senior season where she hit .500, scored 26 runs, stole 30 bases, and hit two home runs. She is an athletic player with frightening speed, meaning she will fit well in the steal-happy Mountain West.
Other that these few players, I don’t really expect much from the Spartans’ hitting core this season. This wasn’t a massive problem last year, they still made the Tournament, after all. However, this season, I do believe that they have a much weaker lineup in the area that carried them there a year ago: the pitching staff.
Pitching Core
While the Spartans hit and scored less than anyone else in the conference in 2025, they were at less of a disadvantage than most would have been in this scenario due to their solid pitching staff. Led by fellow All-MWC first team member Mia Reynolds, the Spartans finished with a team-wide ERA of 3.35, placing 4th in the conference in that area.
The two-gal tandem of Reynolds and Lacie Ham handled 282.1 innings in 2025, finishing with an average ERA of 3.14 and 196 total strikeouts. Reynolds’ 120 Ks placed her in 4th overall in the conference. As you could probably guess by this point, neither of these players are still playing for the Spartans, both having graduated after the season.
Outside of those two, three other pitchers got time in the circle in 2025, handling just 48 total innings between them. In that time, the three combined for an ERA of 4.96 with just 15 total strikeouts, the majority of which came from now-junior Ava Conti’s tally of 10, and the best ERA of which being Taylor Peacock’s 3.60 in 23.1 innings of service.
Having picked up so many freshmen for the hitting core, it should also come as little surprise that the Spartans added zero freshmen to the rotation for 2026. The only player they added is former Stony Brook pitcher Jordyn Fray. The problem here is that Fray only served exclusively as a reliever in her two seasons with the Seawolves, recording a personal-best ERA of 4.19 in her 31.1 innings recorded last year.
Long story short, it genuinely appears as if the Spartans are heading into 2026 without a single reliable pitcher. This staff honestly leaves me with genuine questions of what the Spartans are actually doing with their once-proud softball program, leading into a new season featuring a team with such chaos in its pitching ranks. Perhaps brand-new Spartan pitching coach Roberto Verdugo can make some magic happen this season, but this is certainly a difficult-looking crew to make it with.
Prediction
2025 Result: 22-28 (9-13 MWC), Regular Season: 6th, Tournament: 6th, Missed NCAA Tournament
2026 Prediction: 14-34 (6-19 MWC), Miss Conference, NCAA Tournaments
Overall, my prediction may seem a bit harsh, and I would love to be proven wrong by this Spartans squad. However, I truly think that this will be a tough year for San Jose State, especially with the weakness of their pitching core. I bad for how hard I have gone on the pitching staff, and let me be clear: the players do not deserve criticism whatsoever. I just cannot understand the thought process of the Spartan administration in forcing a staff of career relievers and undeveloped prospects to be the full-time starters entering a season, all while adding nine freshman hitters that they cannot possibly all develop.
Between the pitching staff that is, quite frankly, incomplete, and the hitting core that, while having its talented players, is also the reigning worst hitting core in the conference, I cannot see a way in which this season goes well for the Spartans, at least out of the gate. All of that is before you dig into their schedule.
I actually think the Spartans start 0-6, given they are opening their season with six consecutive games against reigning Regional Finals-caliber teams. Perhaps they can find a way to defeat UCSB again, but it is simply too hard to pick them in most games with their weak rotation. Their first obvious chance to win a game will be in their two games against Illinois State, a team that looks superior to the Spartans on paper. If they cannot beat the Redbirds in either game, they surely will struggle to beat the power-conference Utes or Huskies, meaning that if things truly go sideways, this team could start the season 0-10. From there, they do have two easy MTEs in a row, which could help them get back on track, just as easily as they could help the Spartans continue backsliding.
This isn’t even getting into their conference slate, which looks progressively more brutal as you look more into the makeup of their team. While their slate is not the worst in the world, facing four hot-hitting teams (GCU, Nevada, Utah State, Boise State) on the road, each in a three-game series, will be very difficult in the long run.
I honestly thought I would end this series with Colorado State being the worst team in the conference, but the more I thought about the Spartans, the more I began to agree with the general consensus surrounding them in 2026: this is shaping up to be a very bad team.
Next up will be the UNLV Lady Rebels, dropping tomorrow, February 1, at 8:00 a.m. PST.
