By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Spear Reporter
Following a blow-out win over Wyoming, head coach Tim Miles playfully tapped San Jose State broadcaster Justin Allegri’s arm and cracked, “Is that what we’re doing, the first again?” after Allegri noted it was SJSU’s first win over the Cowboys since 2016.
It was a running joke after wins during SJSU men’s basketball’s historic run. Miles would plop down at press row for a post-game interview with Allegri and was instantly reminded of how the victory was either the first of its kind or first in a long time.
Months later, when the Spartans won their first-ever postseason game, Allegri joked, “I’m gonna start with the first – I know you hate it – but it’s the first program victory in the postseason for San Jose State.”
And despite the season being long over with, Miles is once again reminded of another first:
The 2022-23 season marked the first time SJSU men’s basketball, football and baseball made the postseason in the same year.
With all three sports in the rearview, it’s time to drive down memory lane.
SJSU football went bowling
Head coach Brent Brennan pin-balled around a ring of raucous Spartans, grabbed a bean bag bowling ball and hurled it toward a set of pillowed pins.
Strike.
The bowling party after SJSU football clinched bowl eligibility with a win over Colorado State on Nov. 5, 2022. This marked the first time SJSU secured bowl eligibility twice in the span of three years since 1986 and 1987 when the Spartans faced Eastern Michigan in back-to-back California Bowls.
History repeated itself again as SJSU faced Eastern Michigan in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in 2023. Reaching the bowl was the peak of the experience after the Spartans were defeated handily in Boise, Idaho.
Following the loss, Brennan was emotionally raw. His misty red eyes revealing the sting of sending his deeply cherished senior class off in losing fashion.
But the ending should rest behind what that senior class accomplished.
Senior bookend Junior Fehoko became the 2022 Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year and was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the fourth round of this year’s NFL Draft. Fehoko played a pivotal role in SJSU’s surge from winning eight games in Brennan’s first three years to becoming a Mountain West Champion in 2020.
Fehoko was one of 11 Spartans who achieved All-Mountain West honors and one of four Spartans who took home All-Mountain West First Team honors. Standing proudly alongside fellow senior bookend Cade Hall, senior linebacker Kyle Harmon and graduate transfer wide receiver Elijah Cooks.
Quarterback Chevan Cordeiro made a seamless transition from conference foe Hawaii to SJSU. He tossed a conference-leading 3,251 yards and 23 passing touchdowns and rushed for an SJSU record nine touchdowns en route to All-Mountain West Second Team honors.
SJSU men’s basketball’s year of firsts
In the realm of SJSU men’s basketball’s firsts, the aforementioned Wyoming win was pulverized by the pillars that the 2022-23 season now rests upon:
The Spartans snatched their first postseason victory in the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) over Southern Indiana and upset Nevada for its first Mountain West Tournament victory. The pair of victories helped lift SJSU to its first time 20-win season in over four decades and the 21 total wins tied the program’s regular season record.
On an individual level, Miles became the first SJSU head coach to win the Mountain West Head Coach of the Year, while point guard Omari Moore became the first Spartan to be named a Mountain West Player of the Year.
Miles and Moore helped shift SJSU’s identity from Mountain West punching bag to a valid opponent in the ring. Collecting quad-one wins over conference foes Nevada, Boise State and Utah State and finished with 10 conference wins – their most since joining the Mountain West in 2013.
All of this coming after SJSU won just one conference game a year ago.
Miles, while being pursued by SJSU to become its next head coach in the spring of 2021, once quipped to Brennan on a FaceTime call, “I’m starting to think they are going to call me Coach F.E.M.A., you know Federal Emergency Management. I only take over disasters.”
Before this year, SJSU’s last winning season came over a decade ago and the Spartans’ won double-figure games only once out of the last 11 seasons. Prior to Miles’ disaster relief work beginning in 2021, the Spartans went 20-93 in four seasons under head coach Jean Prioleau.
Moore, the only remaining player of the Prioleau era, rose from the ashes of defeat and became the face of SJSU’s meteoric rise. He was the Mountain West’s fourth-leading scorer (17.4 points), dished the second-most assists (4.8) and went for a 26-point triple-double in SJSU’s lauded victory over Nevada in the Mountain West Tournament.
SJSU baseball found vengeance
A year ago, SJSU baseball was reeling from the cold, hard slap that was the 2022 Mountain West Championship loss to Air Force. Despite winning just six games in 2021 and multiple seasons below .500 before then, minds were focused on what wasn’t achieved versus what was achieved.
The 2023 campaign was about unfinished business, but the hunger was intensified by the echoes of it being a “Last Dance.” A myriad of the team’s veteran core were leaving after the season’s end.
A year later, SJSU satisfied its appetite for vengeance by defeating Air Force for its first-ever Mountain West Championship.
But for the Spartans, led by 2023 Mountain West Head Coach of the Year Brad Sanfilippo, it wasn’t just about hoisting the Mountain West postseason and regular season titles. The win was a vessel to reach the program’s first Super Regional since 2002.
While the Spartans had an early exit in the Stanford Regional, the 2023 campaign deserves to be hailed. In two years, SJSU went from getting dog walked to dogpiling at the mound – twice.
A feat that’s unachievable without new additions in first-year pitching coach, Mat Keplinger, who helped lower SJSU’s staff ERA from 6.92 to 5.95. Plus, senior reliever Jack White, who became an All-Mountain West First Team honoree after transferring from Michigan.
But the 2023 season is remembered by those who’ve languished alongside Sanfilippo in the land of ‘Will we ever turn this thing around?’
Chief among them is sixth-year senior outfielder Jack Colette, fifth-year pitcher Jonathan Clark, fifth-year senior reliever Darren Jansen, fourth-year third baseman Dalton Bowling and fourth-year outfielder Robert Hamchuk, who was named the 2023 Mountain West Tournament MVP.
Jansen, after closing out SJSU’s regular season title-clinching game said, “We love each other to death and we’re all one big happy family.”
From football to basketball to baseball, the 2022-23 season was a three-leg relay of rewritten history. An exercise that deserves acknowledgment and praise – for now.
In reality, members of the 1981 basketball team, 1987 football team, or the 2002 baseball team likely never imagined it would take decades to reach those same heights.
For SJSU, success shouldn’t just be a decade-to-decade phenomenon. Rather a year-to-year one.
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