CHICAGO – Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg looked for the green light. He couldn’t catch Dusty May’s eye. So the Big Ten Player of the Year sent it anyway.
Not a shot.
A line.
“Honestly, I kind of felt a little disrespected having a freshman guarding me,” Lendeborg said at the podium with his head coach a mere feet away, as the 23-year-old, do-it-all graduate forward explained why he posed like he did after breaking the ankles of Alabama forward Amari Allen and knocking down a momentum-shifting 3-pointer in last Friday’s NCAA tournament Midwest regional semifinal.
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That triple swished 51 seconds into the second half of a 90-77 Sweet 16 victory. It gave the top-seeded Wolverines a lead they had lost to the No. 4 seeded Crimson Tide while missing their final five field-goal attempts before halftime.
“I feel like a lot of us weren’t playing as good as we wanted to, so naturally your confidence goes down a little bit, but after seeing somebody come out, make somebody fall and hit a 3 in their face, that definitely gives you some confidence,” junior point guard Elliot Cadeau said in the locker room postgame.
Michigan was in the driver’s seat the rest of the way. After trailing for more than 15 minutes in the first half, May’s Wolverines were in front the final 19 minutes, 9 seconds of a win that reserved their spot in the Elite Eight.
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Lendeborg, who sniffed a triple-double with 23 points, 12 rebounds and 7 assists, was the tone-setter — on both ends and in both halves.
He followed up that highlight-reel, second-half 3-pointer with a pair of steals he converted into assists, playing a seismic part in Michigan’s mid-game defensive revival. Two days later against No. 6 seeded Tennessee, Lendeborg delivered a similar two-way impact with a trip to the Final Four on the line.
He scored eight points during a 21-0 run that made a Michigan-friendly United Center feel like the Crisler Center. Lendeborg, a 6-foot-9, 240-pound stat-sheet stuffer whom his teammates call “Dominican LeBron” because of his roots, his jersey number and his play style, gathered on the break, split a pair of Volunteers defenders and absorbed a foul from a third while going up and under for a reverse layup.
In the second half of that 95-62 blowout, his 27-point outing featured a one-handed slam that saw him soar to the cup with such ferocity that the rim rattled like a diving board. Then he paired a chase-down block on one end with a follow-up to his own missed 3 on the other end, his relentless hustle rewarding him with a putback.
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And to think Lendeborg was playing his first consequential minutes of organized basketball about six years ago. Now the former JUCO standout and UAB star is a headlining act of March Madness.
“This is pretty much the dream come true,” Lendeborg said last Friday. “I didn’t think I’d be this far, just in life in general … I feel really blessed. Sometimes I’m at a loss of words when I think about where I am right now.”
On Sunday, with a piece of a cut-down net sprouting from his sideways Final Four cap, and the Michigan fight song blaring, Lendeborg’s picture was worth a thousand words.
He managed to offer some more: “When I committed here, I wanted to become a champion. I imagined us being the lone standing team in college basketball. We’re one step closer.”
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‘I owe it all to my mom’
Yaxel Lendeborg has Michigan on the verge of its first Final Four appearance since 2018. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
(Michael Reaves via Getty Images)
Once unknown in the college basketball world, Lendeborg’s story has become well-documented. It’s spreading like a wildfire now that the Wolverines are in Indianapolis preparing to face the No. 1 seeded Arizona Wildcats on Saturday in a national semifinal.
He’s discussed how he struggled to find direction, aimlessly spending gobs of time playing video games and struggling academically as a result. Lendeborg even wrote about it himself in a Feb. 20 Players’ Tribune article titled, “How my mom saved my life.” In it, he describes a life-changing conversation she initiated that led to him taking a slew of community college classes so he could get back on track to graduate high school.
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“I owe it all to my mom. She really drove me out of the hole that I was in,” Lendeborg said Friday of his beloved Yissel Raposo, who has been battling appendix cancer.
Lendeborg found purpose as a high school senior in Pennsauken, New Jersey, where he teased his potential on the hardwood in 11 varsity games that year. That started a journey that first took him from Arizona Western, a community college near the Mexico border, to Birmingham, Alabama, where he twice earned AAC Defensive Player of the Year honors at UAB.
He was among the hottest commodities in the transfer portal last offseason. Michigan won the sweepstakes for his lucrative services. He’s since turned into a consensus All-American, and the 35-win Wolverines have returned to the Final Four for the first time since 2018.
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In the wake of arguably the best game of his life, during which Lendeborg asserted himself in the Sweet 16 as the best player on the court, he credited his mom. She, like his father, hooped for the Dominican Republic national team, and her presence takes his game to another level.
“The majority of the times when she’s here and she’s in the stands, I feel like I get a lot more aggressive,” Lendeborg said Friday. “She has this certain calling that she does whenever I get the ball. And it’s like, I can hear nobody else in the stadium but her, and it puts me in attack mode, honestly.
“There was many times today where I was looking to pass the ball, and I hear the noise and it’s like, ‘I must have an opening that I don’t see.’ So I just go. And if something happens, something happens. Majority of the time, something did happen today.”
Lendeborg will turn 24 in September, which makes him a relatively old NBA prospect, but he’s still young basketball-wise.
“Him starting basketball later on, it gives him that excitement, that kid feeling when he’s playing here in the NCAA tournament and just big stages that he’s ready for,” graduate guard Nimari Burnett said of the often-smiling, unashamedly goofy Michigan icon.
“And so just to see him play at an elite level but also just playing a game that he loves, I think that’s what allows him to play at the level he’s playing at right now.”
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‘I think we have an NBA player playing for us in college’
Burnett remembers when it hit him that Lendeborg was different. It was in a pickup game.
“I saw him do a couple crazy dunks that I’m like, ‘Yo, that’s kind of crazy,’ the graduate guard recalled in the locker room after the Wolverines’ Sweet 16 victory. Burnett said Lendeborg threw down a 360 slam off one foot and a windmill that he later showcased during a Dec. 9 drubbing of Villanova.
He caught bodies as well, even dunking on 6-foot-7 reserve forward Oscar Goodman.
“Don’t tell Oscar I said that,” Burnett noted.
After Lendeborg drilled a last-second 3-pointer to send the Wolverines to the Big Ten tournament championship earlier this month, he told reporters that the tie-breaking basket against Wisconsin was the first game-winner of his career.
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When asked about his head-turning ankle breaker against Alabama last Friday, he said he thinks it was the first time he’s made somebody fall with his handles since he was playing at the park in middle school.
“He’s just built for the moment,” Cadeau said. “So when you put him on a stage like this, he starts doing things that maybe he’s never done before, but that’s just him, and he just knows how to step up in moments like this.”
Following a humbling Big Ten tournament final loss to Purdue, Lendeborg explained that the setback would fuel the conference’s regular-season champs to “never lose again.”
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Back in the same arena, and even the same locker room, the Wolverines started to exorcise those demons in the Windy City. The Boilermakers punched Michigan in the mouth after halftime in that March 15 matchup. Less than two weeks later, Lendeborg made sure the Wolverines were the ones landing blows out of the break.
Later that month, Lendeborg made sure Michigan was the one landing a blow out of the break against Alabama, and he helped his Wolverines overpower a Tennessee squad known for its brute force.
“He hasn’t been playing basketball for that long, so for that to be true and for him to be this good is crazy,” Cadeau said last Friday. “And when he reaches his prime, you don’t know what you’ll see. You might see one of the best players in the NBA.”
Junior center Aday Mara added: “I think the same way. I think we have an NBA player playing for us in college.”