From Philly to Florida: Wooga Poplar is the latest in a recent run of Philadelphia-area players starring at Miami

Five years ago, Wooga Poplar was a sophomore at Math, Civics and Sciences Charter School playing organized basketball for the first time. Last weekend, he was a sophomore wing for Miami helping the fifth-seeded Hurricanes escape 12th-seeded Drake and then contributing to Miami’s win over No. 4 Indiana to reach the Sweet 16.

What would that 16-year-old think about his future self making three three-pointers and scoring 15 points in that win over Drake in the NCAA Tournament? Is it all so crazy to think about?

Poplar chuckled.

“Probably not,” he said. “A lot of stuff that’s exciting to other people normally just isn’t exciting to me. I don’t get real hype over things. It was cool, but I’m just glad we got the W.”

Save the excitement for others, like MCS coach and principal Lonnie Diggs, who was in Albany, N.Y. — among other Poplar friends and family members — watching Poplar and the Hurricanes play in their first two tournament games.

“It was exciting just seeing where he came from when he got here as a 10th grader to where he is now,” Diggs said. “It’s amazing the progress and maturity he’s made.”

Poplar is having somewhat of a breakout in his sophomore season in Florida. After playing sparingly as a freshman, the 6-foot-5 Philadelphian averages 8.4 points and 3.2 rebounds and is shooting 40.2% from the three-point range this season. He arguably was the biggest reason Miami survived Drake and was playing well before getting injured in the game against Indiana. Poplar is questionable to play in Friday night’s Sweet 16 game vs. top-seeded Houston with a back injury, but he seems to be trending in the right direction.

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The Hurricanes need him, which would be a pretty remarkable sentence considering that biographical note about him not playing organized basketball until he was in 10th grade. But it isn’t like Poplar picked up a ball for the first time at 16. Far from it. He spent his formative years playing on outdoor courts on the north side of Philadelphia, like at the Francisville Recreation Center or the King Center just off of Temple’s campus.

When he joined the team at MCS, he already was a tough guard with natural shooting ability.

“He was just raw,” Diggs said. “You could see the potential there with his athleticism.”

When did Diggs think what he saw last weekend in Albany was possible? It wasn’t after much seasoning. It came quickly, just a few games into that sophomore season. Poplar was benched in the first half, and there was a long discussion at halftime about his lack of effort. He then scored 27 points in the second half in an MCS victory.

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“From that moment, he just constantly progressed to where he’s gotten to now,” Diggs said.

MCS won the PIAA 2A state title that year and Poplar was a second-team all-state selection. And between playing with MCS and AAU basketball with K-Low Elite, Poplar became a top 100 prospect and landed at Miami, choosing the Hurricanes and coach Jim Larrañaga over schools like Auburn, Maryland, Seton Hall, Georgia, and Penn State.

Poplar is the latest in a run of recent Philly-area players to star at Miami. The list includes top Catholic League scorer Ja’Quan Newton, Reading’s Lonnie Walker IV (now with the Los Angeles Lakers), and current senior guard Isaiah Wong (Bonner-Prendergast). And Wong isn’t the only Philly connection Poplar has in Coral Gables. Miami assistant coach DJ Irving is a Chester native who played at Archbishop Carroll and joined the Miami staff after coaching at Roman Catholic.

It was Irving, Poplar said, who helped him stay focused when Poplar wasn’t playing much last year as a freshman on a talented and experienced Miami team that reached the Elite Eight.

“DJ told me to stay patient and that my time was going to come,” Poplar said. “Having that person in my ear and telling me to not give up was really helpful.”

In the transfer portal era, it would’ve been pretty easy to see Poplar get frustrated with his playing time and move on to somewhere else.

“I just didn’t want to run from nothing,” Poplar said. “When adversity hits, you can’t just shy away from it. I’m not running from it. I’m going to get through it, whatever I gotta get through.”

“He’s just a really loyal person,” Diggs said. “He looks at those guys as family now. He wanted to be good there, and he was going to do everything he could to be good there.”

He’s showing it when it matters most. In a regular-season finale home game vs. Pittsburgh, Poplar scored 18 points on 6-of-8 shooting from three-point range to help Miami secure a share of the ACC regular-season crown and the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. Then came the 15-point performance against Drake, which featured three first-half three-pointers and a key 4-0 run late in the second half.

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Nothing has really changed about his game from last year until now, or even from high school, Poplar said. There are two keys, though: playing time and confidence.

“I’ve been capable of everything I’m doing,” he said. “I really feel like y’all haven’t seen anything yet, and that’s why I don’t talk much about it.”

Diggs said he’s seen the improvement most on the defensive end.

The player and former coach keep in touch. They talk a few times a week and were on a FaceTime call catching up Wednesday night ahead of Friday’s game. Diggs wanted to know how Poplar, who’s nursing that slight back injury was feeling, but more than that, they just talked about life. He’s hoping to make a last-minute trip to Kansas City, Mo., to see Friday night’s game against Houston.

Despite his busy coaching schedule and running a school, Diggs said he watched every Miami game this year, either live or taped. Asked about Poplar not being overly excited about much, Diggs said Poplar is “just really level-headed. He doesn’t get too up or too down.”

Even now, on the brink of a deep NCAA Tournament run, Poplar said he isn’t making it more than it is.

“Really, I’m not that excited,” he said. “It’s just another game. I don’t really want to put a lot of pressure on it. I’m already an over-thinker a little bit. So I don’t think about all that stuff and just take it day by day and live in the moment.”