Idaho forward Debora dos Santos, coach Arthur Moreira bond through shared perseverance

Arthur Moreira and Debora dos Santos are tied together by silver linings.

Dark clouds descend, but ultimately things work out to the benefit of both.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country in 2020-21. Basketball coaches could not physically contact players or go to see them play. But Moreira, an assistant coach with the University of San Francisco, was fanatic about watching videotape and keyed in on a player from his native Brazil who was playing junior college ball at South Plains College in Texas.

“We needed a post player that year,” he remembers. He had seen dos Santos play in Brazil and recalled her as “a great athlete. But she didn’t know how to play basketball.

“She had unbelievable hands, and the quickest second jump I have ever seen in my career. Before her opponent lands, she is jumping again.”

His diligence at outworking the recruiting competition during the pandemic, and probably their shared Brazilian heritage, allowed him to land a whale. dos Santos was a six-foot forward five-star recruit for the Dons.

She tore an anterior cruciate ligament her first year with USF. But she returned in 2022-23 to average 12.1 points and 7.2 rebounds a game. The next season, she was an all-West Coast Conference first-teamer, averaging 15.2 points and 10.6 rebounds.

Forward to 2025, Moreira had moved on from USF to succeed Carrie Aimey as Idaho’s head coach. In January, dos Santos tore the ACL in her other knee. She still harbored dreams of playing professional basketball but decided a change of schools could benefit her.

Almost as soon as she entered the transfer portal, she says, Moreira contacted her. He made his case for her becoming a Vandal.

“Best case scenario,” he told her, you will be out until the first game, and that’s if everything goes well. If you come here, you know I will take care of you, and you know that I know what you can do,” he said.

dos Santos says “it is really good knowing he has got my back.

“Especially at the beginning of the season he said ‘there is no reason to be pushing you. We are going to manage your time.’”

Things have worked out nearly fabulously so far. Idaho is 15-5 overall, 6-1 in the Big Sky Conference and in second place behind 7-1 Montana State.

dos Santos and Lorena Barbosa, 6-5, and another senior transfer from Brazil and USF, are sharing the post position. Barbosa, averaging nearly 15 minutes per game, is averaging 8.3 points and 4.5 rebounds per game.

dos Santos, coming off the bench, is averaging 16.3 minutes per game, 7.5 rebounds and 10.4 points. Following games against Idaho State and Weber State in which she averaged 12 points and 10 rebounds, dos Santos was named the Big Sky player of the week.

Opponents’ starting post players may have better overall stat lines, but the aggregate of dos Santos and Barbosa frequently tops them, according to Moreira.

“I really think they are the two best post players in the conference,” he says.

It begs the question, what are Vandals’ practices like?

dos Santos laughs. “We are never on the same team,” she says. “Sometimes we go down and back. She scores and I score. Just once I want to be on the same team.”

With both players having histories of injuries, Moreira is managing their time.

“They are close to 100 percent. The goal is to have them be the best version of themselves in March, he says.

For her part, dos Santos, the former five-star recruit, is comfortable coming off the bench.

“Our goal is March Madness,” she says. “I really don’t mind coming off the bench.”

She does not minimize what it took to get to this point. As a survivor of two ACL tears, one in each knee, dos Santos acknowledges recovery “is a really long process. Even a year after the injury “you have still got to take care of it. Mentally it is really tough,” she says. “You have got to be focused.”

But she figures she is about 95 percent recovered. The dream of playing professionally remains before her after this season. In the meantime, playing a final season in Moscow has been beneficial. It reminds dos Santos of her father’s home town in rural Brazil, she says, and offsetting the vibe of living in a city like San Francisco is the way the UI and Moscow rally around a Vandals team that could make a run to the NCAA tournament.

“I see how much the community embraces the college,” dos Santos says.

“This year has been nice. It has been really good for me.”

A silver lining.

In the future, will she consider herself a USF Don or an Idaho Vandal?

Dos Santos laughs again.

“Definitely both,” she says.