Carlotta Kloppenburg-Pruitt joined the San José State staff as an assistant coach in the spring of 2018, arriving in Silicon Valley after serving as the assistant director for women's basketball operations and assistant recruiting coordinator at Arizona State.
Kloppenburg-Pruitt's primary on-court responsibilities include coaching the team’s defensive schemes, post and center development and opponent scouting. Off the court, she leads the daily operations of and continued effort to expand the Women of Excellence Program and was the recruiting coordinator for the 2020 class.
She has completed three seasons with the Spartans, most notably helping lead the program to the nation's largest single-season win turnaround on the 2019-20 campaign. SJSU won 19 games in her second season on staff, obtaining the program's most victories in 40 years despite having its trip to a postseason tournament canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Kloppenburg-Pruitt's first season at San José State came in the 2018-19 campaign. The Spartans ended the regular season as one of the conference's hottest teams, winning four of their final six contests.
The Susanville, Calif. native spent two seasons at Arizona State before coming to San José. Her tenure with the Sun Devils was highlighted by notable wins away from home against No. 10 Oregon State and 15th-ranked Kentucky. The team made back-to-back trips to the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament throughout her time in Tempe.
Prior to arriving in the Valley of the Sun, Kloppenburg-Pruitt spent two years at Winthrop. She began as a graduate assistant before assuming the position of assistant coach with the Eagles.
Kloppenburg-Pruitt got her start in coaching through internships with a trio of WNBA teams. In 2014 and 2015, she served as a coaching intern for the Los Angeles Sparks and Indiana Fever. Prior to those stints, she spent the 2012 and 2013 seasons as a basketball operations intern with the Tulsa Shock.
A 2014 graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University, Kloppenburg-Pruitt competed for the Sea Lions women’s basketball team for two seasons. In her senior campaign, she was honored as a National Christian College Athletic Association Scholar-Athlete and was an Academic All-PacWest honoree in both her junior and senior seasons.
Prior to her time at PLNU, Kloppenburg-Pruitt attended Ventura College and won back-to-back North Division titles with the Pirates. She was named the school's Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2012 and her team went 55-9 in her two seasons in Ventura.
Kloppenburg-Pruitt earned a bachelor’s degree with Cum Laude honors in exercise and sports science from PLNU. In 2017, she was awarded her master's degree in Sport and Fitness Administration from Winthrop.
Basketball runs in the Kloppenburg family as her father, Gary, has served as a head and assistant coach in the WNBA since 2000 (most recently as the Seattle Storm's interim head coach for the 2020 season). Her grandfather, Bob, coached in the NBA for 17 years and is widely regarded as one of the most innovative defensive minds in basketball history.
Kloppenburg-Pruitt and her husband, Carter, reside in San José.