by Noah Perkins / Times of San Diego / Nov. 6, 2026,
Carlotta Kloppenburg-Pruitt has a lot of history on The Point.
Point Loma Nazarene’s new women’s basketball head coach is following a path that started with Grandpa Bob Kloppenburg. He coached men’s basketball at California Western, once located on the Point Loma campus, for nearly 20 years, starting in 1958, and developed the SOS pressure defense there.
Years later, Kloppenburg-Pruitt played two seasons at Point Loma during its transition to NCAA Division II under Bill Westphal, whose brother, Paul, coached alongside Bob in the NBA with the Seattle SuperSonics.
“There was definitely some familiarity with our families,” Kloppenburg-Pruitt remembered. “Point Loma was my dream school out of high school. I just wasn’t good enough yet. I went to Ventura College for two years, got to play, learned a lot and got better. When it came time to go to the next level, Point Loma was the first one I reached out to. My visit was kind of a visit, but it was also kind of a tryout, and I probably had the best day of my life.”
Kloppenburg-Pruitt played at Point Loma in 2012-13 and 2013-14, averaging 10.0 points per game as a freshman and earning Academic All-PacWest honors both seasons.
“There’s quite a few people still here from when I was a player, but now I’m getting to work with them more directly,” said Kloppenburg-Pruitt, who was hired June 29 to succeed Charity Elliott. “The campus is so similar to when I was here. There’s a new science building and some renovations, but it still feels very familiar.
“The teams have all gotten better, too, and I think that’s going to be really fun — the competition within each sports program. Everybody is competing on the national stage, and I think that’s a big area where it’s grown since I graduated.”
A third-generation coach, Kloppenburg-Pruitt followed her grandfather and dad, Gary Kloppenburg, a La Jolla High School and later UC San Diego hooper who spent 20 years coaching in the WNBA.
“Everything that we do defensively is derived from them,” she said. “This campus is really where [grandpa Bob] was able to experiment and build his defensive philosophy. My dad has really adapted that defense and done different things with it. For me, I’ve just taken pieces of it and adapted it to what works best for our program and the college game.”
After playing at Point Loma, Kloppenburg-Pruitt began her coaching career with WNBA internships before moving into college coaching at Arizona State and San Jose State. She landed her first head-coaching job at Southern Oregon in 2021 and went 134-31 in five seasons. She led the Raiders to the NAIA National Tournament every year while winning two regular-season conference championships and three conference tournament championships.
“I’ve adapted quite a few things from the different journeys I’ve been on,” she said. “Culture is everything, and that’s where I’ve been able to put my values and my stamp on our programs.”
