‘He doesn’t know how to play basketball any other way’: Former Bonner-Prendergast star Isaiah Wong’s hard work has led him to the NCAA Tournament

There were some games during Isaiah Wong’s junior year of high school when, based on talent, the Bonner-Prendergast coaching staff knew a win was coming.

Wong was on his way to the first of two consecutive Catholic League MVPs.

Bonner coach Kevin Funston said he would try, unsuccessfully at times, to motivate Wong using the typical rah-rah stuff. He got to know Wong a little better, and found out what made him tick.

» READ MORE: Sign up for our Bracket Jawn for a chance to win $1,000

It was simple, really. Just give Wong a checklist or task. Easy opponent? OK, go get a triple-double.

“I never coached a kid who kind of needed the goals within the game,” Funston said.

Wong would normally complete whatever the goal of the day was.

Now in his third year at Miami, Wong, a 6-foot-3 guard, has checked off one of his other, more long-term goals.

“Ever since I was watching March Madness on my phone, I always wanted to play in it,” he said. “I wanted the same for me, to have someone watching me play on the app.”

The 10th-seeded Hurricanes, in the tournament for the first time since 2018, play seventh-seeded Southern California on Friday at 3:10 p.m. in Greenville, S.C. Wong, alongside Charlie Moore and Kameron McGusty, is part of a potent three-guard attack for Jim Larrañaga’s team. He is averaging 15.2 points and 4.3 rebounds per game for the Hurricanes, down slightly from 17.1 and 4.8 last year, a season that ended with him testing the NBA draft waters.. After not hearing what he wanted to hear during the evaluation process, Wong returned to Coral Gables.

Wong said he’ll decide after the season whether he’ll declare again. The NBA remains a goal, and always has, but the focus right now is on Friday and what may be beyond.

The idea of goal-setting has long been a thing for the Wong family. Wong’s mother, LaChelle, drew up documents for her children to sign in elementary school. In high school, the boys explained their goals and she wrote them on a whiteboard.

“Having four sons, you’ve got to manage them and make sure everybody’s on track with their goals,” LaChelle Wong told the Inquirer in 2018 when her son announced his commitment to Miami. The family had moved to Philadelphia from New Jersey after Wong played his first two high school seasons at Notre Dame in Lawrenceville. The move was, in part, for the benefit of Isaiah’s basketball career.

Having that goal-setting process helped instill a relentless work ethic in Wong. Students at Bonner-Prendergast had a free period some days. They weren’t supposed to use it for gym time, but Wong would go to the athletic director’s office and grab a basketball and ask for the gym to be opened. He wanted to get shots up, and his free period was the last period of the day, so in the gym he went.

“He was always looking for more and different ways to get better,” Funston said.

» READ MORE: How Iowa's Fran McCaffery earned the nickname 'White Magic' playing in Philly

That has continued at Miami. Larrañaga said Wong remains a “gym rat.”

“The thing I’m always impressed with is that the guy plays so hard every single day,” Larrañaga said. “Every practice, every game, he doesn’t know how to play basketball any other way. He just competes really hard.

“I think every guy would tell you he’s the hardest worker, the nicest guy, the greatest teammate, all he cares about is winning,” Larrañaga said.

That’s what helped then-Miami assistant Adam Fisher first notice Wong as a prospect. Fisher, a Jamison, native who is now at Penn State, brought Wong to Larrañaga’s attention. Wong was a standout on a WE-R1 AAU team that was winning national tournaments, and Fisher thought Wong be a great fit for the Hurricanes.

Miami also wasn’t new to recruiting the Catholic League. The league’s all-time leading scorer, Ja’Quan Newton (Neumann Goretti), played for the Hurricanes from 2014-18.

Asked about his potential to play at the next level, Larrañaga likened Wong to the Lakers’ Avery Bradley and former Buck Jason Terry, given their size and scoring abilities. Wong’s shooting still needs to improve, Larrañaga said, and the coach thinks it hasn’t “reached its ceiling.”

Wong has cracked 20 points eight times for the Hurricanes this season, none bigger than a 27-point outburst March 2 vs. Boston College in a game Miami needed.

But the most impressive performance of this season, Larrañaga said, was in a game that didn’t count, an exhibition vs. run-and-gun Nova Southeastern, the No. 1 team in Division II at 30-0. Wong scored 40 points behind eight made triples. He grabbed seven rebounds, made all 10 of his free throws, and also had three steals and three blocks.

“That’s really like the NBA,” Larrañaga said. “It’s uptempo, sometimes a couple passes and pop. That fits very well into Isaiah Wong’s game.”

A win Friday over USC would likely result in a game vs. Auburn, which likes to run. Weirder things have happened in March …

Playing the likes of Roman Catholic and Neumann Goretti in short succession is a good way to train yourself for the rigors of the ACC and now the NCAA Tournament.

“Every game is going to be good competition and sometimes you’re going to have back-to-back games where you play two of the top teams in the conference,” Wong said. “It really prepared me for that.”

It didn’t all click for Wong right away. He came off the bench early in his freshman season and didn’t get rolling as a starter until late January.

“I expected to work hard because my whole life all I did was play basketball,” Wong said. “My mom said, if you’re trying to make it you have to work hard and try to beat the odds and figure out a way to make it easier for yourself.

“It was just a new place. It was better competition,” Wong said of the adjustment. “It was like, we’re playing Duke, UNC … we’re going to be playing NBA players. It was really shocking to be playing these teams. This was what I wanted, but at the moment I just had to get comfortable, and I did.”

The biography on Miami’s athletics site says Wong’s favorite basketball memory was hitting a buzzer-beater to knock off Roman Catholic.

Funston remembers it well. It was just another task, another goal Wong needed to check off in the moment. Funston drew the play up for Wong, and he drilled a midrange jumper to sink Roman in front of a standing-room-only crowd at Bonner-Prendergast.

It was so monumental to the Delaware County school that the JD McGillicuddy’s pub on West Chester Pike displayed the 59-58 score on its sign.

Asked if it was still his favorite basketball memory, Wong said it was.

This, of course, is March, the month when memories are made.

More on the way for Wong and Miami?

“He’s been counted out a lot and overlooked,” Funston said, “and he’s always risen to the challenge.”