The 6-foot-7 senior forward has found a new identity in two of three categories this season:
- Although it is still an ongoing process, he’s taking on the role as a team leader.
It’s something that has been crucial for these Flyers after the loss of three pillars from last year’s team: DaRon Holmes II, who became a NBA first round pick and now is with the Denver Nuggets; Koby Brea is continuing his sharpshooting with the Kentucky Wildcats; and Kobe Elvis is now an integral part of Oklahoma Sooners’ 14-4 team.
While Santos is still developing the vocal part of his leadership role, he’s especially been showing it on the court. He’s leading the team in minutes played, scoring (14.6ppg) and three-point shooting accuracy (43.6 percent) and is second in rebounds.
Friday night 18 NBA scouts were at the game, ostensibly to see Saint Joseph’s high-scoring sophomore, Xzayvier Brown, and senior guard Erik Reynolds III, who, with Friday’s 21 points, now has scored 1,928 in his college career.
But the best performance they saw came from Santos, whose 24 points – which tied his season high – was highlighted by a perfect 4-for-4 effort from three-point range.
The scouts also got a glimpse of 19-year-old Amaël L’Etang, the 7-foot-1 Flyers freshman, who is just learning the college game, but shows some special skills and IQ and that surely will bring them back here in another year to see if he is developing the way Holmes and Obi Toppin, the other recent UD big men, did in the hoops lab of Grant, top assistant Ricardo Greer and the rest of the Flyers’ staff.
- Santos has a new shooting presence, as well, especially if you compare his production and accuracy to his first two college seasons at Pittsburgh, where he got limited playing time.
His first year with the Panthers he shot 22.4 percent from beyond the arc and averaged 2.6 ppg. His second season, he averaged 1.6 points and made just 15.6 percent of his trey attempts.
Now he’s a 43.6 percent (45 of 104) shooter from long range and he credits that to the extra work he puts in.
Two hours before Friday night’s game, he was out on the court putting up shots.
“That’s my routine when we’re at home,” he said. “I try to go out there early and make 100 shots.”
Just as he was a perfect 4-for-4 against the Hawks, he went 6-for-6 against Lehigh in early December,. It was the second best three-point shooting performance in UD history, behind only Shawn Haughn’s 8-for-8 outing against Saint Louis 31 years ago.
And in November, Santos had another six treys (in 10 attempts) in a rout of New Mexico State.
If Santos is now the best — at least statistic-wise three-point shooter on the team — it’s a more heady claim when he said he’s the best shooter in his family.
The Santos clan is unlike almost any family in Division I college basketball this season. His dad, mom, two sisters, his brother and an uncle all played college basketball.
He’s one of just two D-I players to have three siblings who played college basketball. The other is Arkansas Little Rocks’ Jonathan Lawson.
- The only place where Santos is lacking this season is in the nickname category.
On the court and off, his older sister Ashley — who played at Marquette and Louisiana Tech — was known as “Wild Thing” for her aggressive style.
And Santos? What’s his hoops tag?
As he stood alone in a hallway outside the media room after Friday’s game, he shook his head at the question:
“Nothing really, well, except my mom called me ‘The Terminator,’ but it had nothing to do with basketball.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Hoops family
By the end of his second season at Pitt, Santos was rarely playing and that sent him to the transfer portal.
Before landing at UD he said he visited Toledo, High Point, Buffalo and Boston College.
He once told me he knew “pretty much” about UD before he came.
Growing up in Geneva, Illinois, outside Chicago, he said he was coached as a kid by Chris Conrad, whose dad, Kevin, was the deadly-shooting Hall of Fame guard of the Flyers in the early 1980s.
“All he ever talked about was Dayton…Dayton…Dayton,” Santos said.
As he was honing his skills at a Connecticut prep school — after two seasons at Geneva High — Santos was recruited by UD, but chose Pitt and ended up getting in 54 games over two seasons.
He wanted more.
He wanted to have his own formidable branch in the family’s college hoops tree.
Mom, Lori, was a rebounding machine at Wichita State. She led the Gateway Conference in rebounding her first two seasons and was touted as one of the top newcomers in the nation as a freshman.
His dad, Joe, played at Southern Nazarene and in Puerto Rico for the national team and as a pro.
Ashley was the in-your-face guard with the catchy moniker and his sister Sidney played at Oakland, then coached a pro team in Sweden.
Brother KJ played at UIC and Missouri and his uncle Gus played at Wichita State and for the Puerto Rican national team.
All of his siblings have played for various national teams in Puerto Rico and he won a gold medal as a 14 year old on Puerto Rico’s U-15 team that won the Tournament of the Americas.
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Big shots
Although Santos is now in his fourth season of college basketball, Grant added a qualifier to that when it came his leadership seasoning:
“He’s been in college for a while, but last year was his first playing any kind of significant role in terms of what we we’re asking of him.”
Santos started all 33 games last season, averaged 11.7 ppg and won All Atlantic 10 third team honors at season’s end.
“He’s growing tremendously in terms of understanding who he is as a player and what he’s capable of, and what the team needs from him in terms of leadership,” Grant said.
He showed a lot of all that Friday night.
In the first 7 minutes and 36 seconds of the game, Santos made all five shots he took — including two treys — for 12 points. Saint Joseph’s, as a team, had scored just six and trailed UD 21-6.
Although the Flyers led by 13 at the half and expanded the advantage to 16 early in the second half, Saint Joseph’s is a good team — they upset Villanova, Texas Tech and Virginia Tech and clobbered Loyola by 36 points, a team UD edged by just two in overtime — and the Hawks fought back.
They were trailing by just three with 8 seconds left.
Twice during the Saint Joseph’s onslaught, Santos hit a shot when his team needed it badly.
The first was a three with 14:20 left to put UD back up by 10 and then — after five straight Flyers’ possessions ended with three missed shots and two turnovers — he made a jumper in the lane.
Both baskets helped settle his team and Saint Joseph’s never did get a lead in the game.
“I have experience in the program and I am just trying to step up and be a leader every game night and every practice,” Santos said. “I just want to help the guys out.”
Other players have stepped up this season, especially Enoch Cheeks and Malachi Smith. And Javon Bennett has at times, as well.
The other two veterans — both first year transfers, but each with over 100 colleges games on their resumes — are guard Posh Alexander and post player Zed Key.
Alexander though is battling through a foot injury that sidelined him four games ago and though he played Friday, he’s not back to full strength.
Key, who was replaced in the starting lineup by L’Etang, is coming off a hard fall against Loyola eight days ago when he said he landed “on my tailbone.”
He made only one full practice last week and, at the moment, he seems to be in a bit of a funk.
As for Santos, he was unflappable from long range again Friday night.
For the second time this season, one nickname seemed to fit.
If his sister is “Wild Thing” then Friday night he was “Sure Thing.”
Hearing that, Santos mulled it over in his head and finally nodded.
As he turned to go to the dressing room, he was smiling.
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