His strength allows him to play exception positional defense
When a team asks a 6-foot-7 forward to guard the other team’s tallest player, the name of the game is positioning. That’s what we saw Odiase do so well against taller players in 2018-19 and even 6-foot-6 Chris Clarke do effectively this past season when serving as Tech’s primary post defender when Holyfield was off the court with foul trouble.
Thus, it was encouraging to see how well Santos-Silva guarded Harms, who had an 8-inch height advantage on him. He was able to get early position in the lane and essentially play the role of a tree stump that couldn’t be uprooted. Thus, when Haarms got the ball, he was often too far away from the rim to be able to score with his back to the goal.
Santos-Silva also displayed a keen understanding of timing and played with excellent anticipation. In fact, on one possession, he shot the gap at the top of the key coming up with a steal which turned into a breakaway dunk.
I’ve also read that his wingspan is around 7-feet which allows him to contest shots of taller players. And when those shots go up, he’s far more dedicated to boxing out his man than any player on this past season’s Texas Tech basketball team. That’s a trait that will make him a quick fan favorite in Lubbock after the way Tech was abused on the defensive glass at times this year.
What I wasn’t able to see in this game was whether or not he is comfortable guarding smaller players. VCU didn’t switch many screens nor Purdue didn’t set all that many, to begin with.
But what was evident is the fact that he is athletic enough to react defensively. VCU runs an aggressive half-court trapping defense that asks its forwards to cover all over the court and stop the other team from getting easy looks once they have beaten the trap of the VCU guards.
In that role, Santos-Silva was asked to be his team’s last line of defense. Though he didn’t block any shots against Purdue, he averaged 1.3 per game this season. But more importantly, he was able to be in the correct position to deter easy drives to the rim and he’s not afraid to put someone on their backside when they get to the goal.
Though he is not as tall as many might want in a “big man”, he’s more than big enough to hold his own defensively. In fact, his ability to engage in hand-to-hand or shoulder-to-shoulder combat in the post with teams like Baylor, Texas, and West Virginia (all of which will have tons of size next year) will be massively important.