BUFFALO − Sometimes, Yaxel Lendeborg can be, well, passive.
It’s the Michigan basketball star’s nature on the court – feel his way into a game, look to set up his teammates and find his flow as the game goes along.
That’s all good – after all, he did win Big Ten player of the year while doing a little bit of everything. But every now and then, assistant coach Mike Boynton Jr. issues a challenge: Take over this game.
The Wolverines’ March Madness second-round date with Saint Louis on Saturday, March 21, was one of those times.
As the saying goes, ask, and ye shall receive − Lendeborg scored a game-high 25 points, delivered multiple highlight-reel plays and propelled the 1-seed Wolverines to a dominant win over the 9-seed Billikens to advance to the Sweet 16.
“It feels amazing,” Lendeborg said Saturday afternoon. “Honestly, just coach Boynton kept talking to me like, when am I going to show up? And I kept telling him, ‘I got you, I got you’ but in reality, I feel like whenever the team needs me, that’s when I’ll step up big.
“Saint Louis started making a little bit of a run and at that point it’s like, I’m gonna be that guy to step up and make those plays for the team until everybody gets more comfortable and we can go back to playing free.”
There were several plays that could’ve been the standout moment. Was it his three-quarter-court pass to Aday Mara just in front of the rim, finished by Mara behind his head.
Or later in the half, when he came around a screen as his friend Roddy Gayle Jr. spotted him from the left elbow and simply threw the ball up for Lendeborg to finish with an authoritative slam? No, on this day, the moment came in the second half, when he came galloping up the court with a full head of steam, stepped through a pair of defenders and hammered home a thunderous slam before he let out a roar.
“Dominican LeBron,” wing Nimari Burnett simply said afterwards. “It’s as simple as those two words, but also just [starts with] his aggression going to the basket.”
‘Smart, practical basketball’
Lendeborg made nine of 13 shots, despite a rare flub. Mara threw him a lob from the right elbow as Lendeborg came slashing down the left baseline. He skied above the defense, nothing but him and the rim … and, somehow, the ball hit both sides of the rim and rattled out.
That never even threatened to derail his game. After an “average” first half for him, as coach Dusty May put it, he turned it on after the break.
“I think he’s done an unbelievable job of giving what the game has given him and playing smart, practical basketball all year,” May said. “But to see his growth and to see how great of a teammate he is for the situation is even more impressive.”
In addition to two massive dunks in the second half, he hit a dagger 3 that was setup by Michigan’s offense that looked like poetry in motion. Roddy Gayle Jr. slashed through the paint and found Will Tschetter in the deep corner. He immediately threw it counter-clockwise to Trey McKenney on the wing, who then threw the extra pass to Lendeborg.
Michigan went up by double figures and the game never got closer than that.
“He rises to the occasion,” Gayle said. “Coming into this game we knew we were going to need to play our best, he was talking about it all night. … When you hear him talking passionately and aggressively about himself, you’re in good shape.”
‘Yeah, I’m jealous’
To the average fan, essentially every player on the court in a Division I basketball game is an elite athlete. But when a player stands out to his teammates as another level of talent all together, well, that’s another level all together.
“Everything he does is just off of ‘2K,’ it’s straight video games,” Gayle said. “Knowing how goofy he is off the court and then when he comes on the court he kicks it into gear … but yeah, I’m definitely jealous. I wish I was 6-foot-9, with a 7-something wingspan, he’s an unreal specimen.”
After a few days back in Ann Arbor, Michigan will leave for Chicago in the middle of the week. The last time Lendeborg was in the Windy City, he had a whirlwind of emotions. An off game against Ohio State and another off first half against Wisconsin sent him into the locker room saying he felt like he had played the worst two games of his life.
But that game against the Badgers wasn’t over; he hit the winning 3 in the final second. And as quickly as the joy came, it was gone just 24 hours later, when Michigan fell to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament title game.
On Saturday, Michigan players announced plans to get revenge on the United Center nets, after missing their chance to cut them down last week. After all, that’s one of the reasons Lendeborg joined the Wolverines − what comes after those nets have been removed from their rims.
“The main goal has always been winning a national championship,” he said. “We think we have the talent to do that, you know, the togetherness to do that.”
Tony Garcia is the Michigan beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Yaxel Lendeborg’s new aggressiveness started with coach’s challenge
Reporting by Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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