“I’m making my way back to the court,” Santos told the Dayton Daily News on Monday in his first interview since the season ended in March. “I think soon I’ll be out there.”
Coach Anthony Grant said in early June that Santos likely wouldn’t be available this summer but was expected to make a full recovery. Grant rarely reveals the specifics of injuries and said at the time it was a “lower-body injury.” He leaves it up to the players whether they want to discuss their injuries.
Santos did just that on Monday.
“I had something going on with my hip,” Santos said. “It’s a cam lesion. I had like a little bone spur that was kind of agitating my hip. They had to go in and clean it up.”
Santos, a 6-foot-7 forward from Geneva, Ill., and Loomis Chaffee High School, started all 33 games last season. He ranked second on the team in scoring (11.7 points per game) and rebounding (6.3) behind All-American forward DaRon Holmes II (20.4 points and 8.5 rebounds).
Santos led the Flyers in minutes played (33.4 per game) despite the hip issue. He learned after the season he would need surgery.
“It was something I was able to play through,” he said. “It was definitely something that as the season went on I kind of felt a little bit more.”
Dayton needs a healthy Santos in the 2024-25 season. He made the All-Atlantic 10 Conference third team and the all-academic team in his first season at Dayton after two seasons at Pittsburgh, where he received limited playing time.
Santos made a name for himself with clutch shots and performances.
• In a 70-67 victory against LSU in the first round of the Charleston Classic in November, Santos made a tie-breaking 3-pointer with 4.1 seconds to play.
• On Senior Day at UD Arena, Santos scored 21 points and made 4 of 6 3-pointers in a 91-86 overtime victory against Virginia Commonwealth. He scored 17 points in the first half as Dayton chipped away at an early 17-point deficit.
• Santos scored the go-ahead basket in the final minute of a 63-60 victory against Nevada in the first round of the NCAA tournament. He then made two free throws with 15 seconds remaining to give Dayton a three-point cushion. Earlier in the second half, with 3:40 to play, he made a 3-pointer to cut Nevada’s lead to 56-53. That basket was part of a 17-0 Dayton run that brought the Flyers back from a 56-39 deficit.
Santos will take the confidence he built with those baskets with him into his final season of eligibility.
“I think it’ll help me a lot,” he said. “I think what helped me get to those moments was just practicing and putting in the reps.”
According to the KenPom.com box scores, Santos was Dayton’s MVP in seven games last season. Only Holmes won that honor more (18 times).
The goal for Santos next season, he said, is to improve on the defensive side and to be a better playmaker for his teammates. He made great strides with his 3-point shot last season. After making 16 of 81 3-pointers (19.8%) in two seasons at Pittsburgh, he made 51 of 122 (41.8%) as a junior.
Santos has started to shoot again after months of recovery from the surgery.
“Coach (Jermaine) Henderson said it’s like riding a bike,” Santos said. “You get back into it, and you get your rhythm back.”
Dayton lost the nation’s leading 3-point shooter, Koby Brea (100 of 201, 49.8%), and its third-most prolific shooter, Kobe Elvis (47 of 127, 37%).
Dayton ranked third in the country and set a school record by making 39.9% of its 3-point attempts. The previous record of 39.2 was set by the 1989-90 Flyers.
While 3-point shooting will still be a big part of the offense, Santos and other players this summer have talked about a focus on playing faster. That’s often talked about in the offseason, but Dayton hasn’t ranked higher than 294 in average offensive possession length since the 2019-20 season.
The offense went through DaRon Holmes II last season and through Holmes and Toumani Camara in the two seasons before that. Santos expects a different look this season and said Grant has talked about the same.
“I think we’re going to play a different style than last year,” Santos said. “That’ll be interesting. It’ll be a lot of fun. We’ll definitely play faster. We have to get up and down. Our depth at guard will help us pick up the pace.”
Santos is one of three returning starters along with fifth-year guard Enoch Cheeks and junior guard Javon Bennett. The other key returner is junior forward Isaac Jack.
Holmes left for the NBA. Elvis, the fifth starter, transferred to Oklahoma, Brea, the A-10 Sixth Man of the Year, transferred to Kentucky. One other rotation piece, Petras Padegimas, left for Mercer.
For a brief time earlier this spring, Santos was also in the portal. He announced April 28 he would enter the portal but announced six days later he would play the 2024-25 season with Dayton.
Santos explained his decision in a post on social media after he returned from the portal and looked back again on his change of heart on Monday.
“It was a crazy sequence for sure,” he said. “With the new age of college athletics, I was just trying to navigate it in the best way that I could. Just being in it, I think I realized specifically how special a place Dayton is and the opportunity I have with coach Grant and coaches and then the relationship that I have with them. That was the most important thing, and that was something that I wanted to stick with.”
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