QUESTION: What is it that brought you to BYU all the way from Brazil?
ANSWER: "I got baptized about a year and a half ago, and I always had interest in coming to BYU. It's a great environment and a great basketball program. I knew that Rafael Araujo, Luiz Lemes and Fernando Malaman played here and they had a Brazilian coach with Walter Roese, so they had the Brazilian connection and that helps a lot. It also was the right fit for my standards as a person."
QUESTION: What kind of affect has your mother, who is a basketball coach, had on your life?
ANSWER: She's everything. She wanted me to be a goalkeeper for soccer, but in my first soccer game ever, I was a goalkeeper and my team lost 8-1, so that was the end of the soccer dream. I started playing basketball when I was five and a half, and I've haven't stopped. My Mom was my coach from five and a half all the way to 16, and she was the first person I talked to every morning and the last one I talked to every night."
QUESTION: Does she still coach you now from long-distance?
ANSWER: "She's watched a couple of my games that I sent her DVDs of so I still get calls. I remember last year in high school I had a game that I scored 42 points, and she was still calling me saying if I would have left my hand in the air and finished the jump shot, I'd have 50. I always listen to her because she knows what she's talking about and she's my Mom."