SAN FRANCISCO – Honored yesterday for his contributions on the court, the conference revealed on Wednesday that Oscar da Silva is the recipient of the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year award.
Named to the All-Pac-12 first team and the All-Pac-12 Defensive Team yesterday, da Silva is the fifth student-athlete in program history to win the award, which began in 2008. He joins Landry Fields (2010), Dwight Powell (2014), Chasson Randle (2015) and Dorian Pickens (2018) in earning the honor. It is presented annually to the top senior student-athlete in the conference in each of the Pac-12's 24 sponsored sports.
A two-year captain, da Silva is majoring in biology with an emphasis on biochemistry and biophysics. Throughout his experience at Stanford he has worked in a stem cell lab on campus under Dr. Michael Longaker, and helped present research at a conference in Baltimore. He is listed as a published author in a research paper titled: "A Clearing Technique to Enhance Endogenous Fluorophores in Skin and Soft Tissue."
da Silva and his teammates have participated in a plethora of volunteer events, and notably have "adopted" a child cancer survivor with Stanford Children's Health. In past years, he would come to practices and games and hang out with the players – an effort that da Silva helped lead. A key contributor all four years on campus, da Silva speaks six languages and has been repeatedly described by head coach Jerod Haase as someone that should "be the face of college basketball nationally."
He was an NABC Honors Court recipient a year ago, and is a two-time Pac-12 All-Academic honoree.