Jim Larranaga gives health update on Wooga Poplar

Miami head coach Jim Larranaga gave an update on the injured Wooga Poplar ahead of the Hurricanes’ Sweet 16 matchup against No. 1 seeded Houston.

Poplar went down pretty hard on the court against Indiana in the Round of 32. Despite the pain, Larranaga sounded confident his player would be available for the next game.

But there’s no proper way to take care of an injury like that, other than rest and perhaps ice, going old school.

“He landed on his bone on his back, back side,” Larranaga said. “So I told him he has to spend the next week nursing that. I don’t know how — what you do with that. I don’t know if you ice it or you get a massage therapist. But we’re going to give him some tender loving care, and hopefully he’ll be back before too long.”

Poplar played just 18 minutes in the win over the Hoosiers. In the win, he had six points, four rebounds and two assists.

Isaiah Wong led the way with 27 points and eight rebounds while Jordan Miller added 19 points, five rebounds and one assist.

“Obviously I felt like we played a great game tonight,” Larranaga said after the win over the Hoosiers. “I really felt we would because of the way we played on Friday night against Drake. I think our guys were a little disappointed we didn’t handle that defense very well. We’ve been a very good offensive team all season long. Sometimes we haven’t been quite as good at the defensive end, but we ended up outrebounding them 48-31. It’s been my experience that every time we outrebound an opponent, we normally win.

“Indiana is a terrific team, and (Trayce) Jackson-Davis is unguardable one-on-one. So we basically put our whole team on him. Started with Norchad on him. Then Anthony Walker guarded him, and then Jordan Miller. We just tried to give whoever was guarding him a lot of help from behind by the guards. I thought we did a terrific job of that.”

Jim Larranaga on Houston

Immediately after the game, Larranaga said he wanted to take a moment before putting all attention on Houston.

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“My answer to that is pretty simple: I’m just going to enjoy tonight,” he said. “I can’t worry about our next opponent. I want to get back with my team, my family, and really have some fun tonight.

“We’ve got to be up early in the morning and fly back to Miami, and then we’ll figure out what our plan is. But we only had one day to prepare for Indiana. And last night we made a decision, and this morning we changed it after reviewing them more. After researching them offensively, we had to make an adjustment before we ever even played the game. So we’ll get ready for Houston when the time comes.”