The Sacramento State Hornets faced their final opponent in 2025, visiting the San Jose State Spartans on Sunday, Dec. 21. Sophomore guard Rubi Gray replicated the opening performance she had against the USF Dons days earlier.
Gray opened the game with a layup and a corner three to even the Hornets’ score with the Spartans’ early in the first quarter.
Gray, who’s the Hornets’ leading scorer in the campaign so far, racked up 16 points to continue her streak of double-digit scoring games to 10 straight.
Though Gray landed a quartet of threes for her team, the Spartans grew more aggressive on offense, conjuring the lead they carried throughout the first half with threes and paintwork.
The Hornets couldn’t close out Spartans redshirt sophomore guard Maya Anderson, who scored a career-high 29 points and made 12 of 21 shot attempts from the field, blending threes and midrange shots.
The first two quarters ended with the Spartans up by double digits, but that trend would change coming back from the half.
Junior guard Natalie Picton saw the greenlight with threes, swinging the Hornets back from the deficit to close out the third period, 46-47.
Utilizing a traveling call on the Spartans, redshirt senior guard Benthe Versteeg collapsed the Spartans’ defense by driving into the paint, dishing to Picton who drilled a three.
Picton’s three kickstarted a 6-0 run that junior forward Elizabeth Abiara added to by taking two separate trips to the line, shooting 3 for 4.
Despite the run, the Spartans regained their defensive discipline, avoiding fouls and going on their own 11-0 run.
“That was the deal-breaker,” head coach Aaron Kallhoff said.
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As the tide began to turn on the Hornets, Kallhoff said that handling SJSU’s zone and reducing turnovers were a big focus.
“We need to work together to get some ball screens against that zone,” Kallhoff said. “We had some breakdowns on both ends.”
The Hornets racked up 26 turnovers against the Spartans, their second consecutive game committing over 25, directly contributing to the 11-0 run.
“My three guards had 20 turnovers out of our 26,” Kallhoff said. “The ball is in their hands a lot, some are on them and some are not, but that’s a lot of turnovers for anybody.”
More than anything, Kallhoff spoke about the team’s depletion of stamina and how fatigue may have pierced the chances for a late-game comeback.
“We might have used so much energy to get back that it caught up with us towards the end,” Kallhoff said.
In addition to fatigue, the team continues to miss their starter and team leader, senior forward Fatoumata Jaiteh.
With Jaiteh out, Kallhoff has worked with a revolving door of players to fill in the fourth slot. In the game against the Spartans, sophomore forward Pinja Paananen got the nod, but junior forward Keanna Salave’a has also seen increased minutes.
“We’re missing that four spot,” Kallhoff said. “It’s hard to play full throttle for that long.”
Jaiteh, who Kallhoff describes as a key player impacting all faucets of the game outside of scoring, continues to recover from a dislocated kneecap that will be reevaluated in the first week of January.
With the turn of the new year right around the corner, the Hornets open conference play on New Year’s Day against Idaho State in the Hornet Pavilion at 6:30 p.m.
“We need to make changes. This will be a complete reset,” Kallhoff said. “We got a good team. We just faced a little bit of adversity, and we need to respond.”
