INDIANAPOLIS — On the long plane trip to Arizona during the COVID season of 2020-21, Yaxel Lendeborg cried.
Not because he was headed to Yuma, where the Michigan forward wound up spending three seasons at Arizona Western College, but because he was leaving home.
The life he knew in New Jersey, after bouncing around Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, with a universe that didn’t extend much beyond video games.
“It was very bad,” Lendeborg said Thursday, during Michigan’s open-locker room interviews at Lucas Oil Stadium. “It was the first time away from my mom. I had just turned 18. It was January 9, 2021. I'm on a plane going to Arizona, and it was brutal.
“I’m crying the the whole way. I'm looking out the window, like, 'Where am I going?' I'm all by myself, (thinking) 'Why didn't she come with me, at least to make sure I was safe?' I was blaming her every day for sending me over there.”
Lendeborg said he pretty much stayed in his room all day at first, though that was part of the reason he was there.
Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg (23) signs an autograph after practice prior to the first round of the NCAA Tournament, March 18, 2026, in Buffalo, N.Y.
In one of the more notable human-interest stories of the college basketball season, one he told to the Players Tribune in a story entitled “How My Mom Saved My Life,” Lendeborg was so addicted to playing video games that he sometimes stayed up all night, often sleeping through classes, and struggled in school.
Then his mom broke the habit, forcing him to take community college courses so he could graduate from high school, then putting her son in a basketball showcase for youth of Dominican heritage.
He stood out, drawing the attention of some juco coaches, and his mother soon struck up a deal with the ones from Arizona Western.
“There was just a lot of back and forth between a lot of people that I didn't know about,” Lendeborg said. “It was very interesting hearing my mom talk about it, because I was so confused. Eventually, it got back that the head coach from Yuma was going back and forth to my mom about me coming to school, and I had no idea, literally.
“So eventually my mom just comes up to me and says, 'You're leaving in two weeks to go to Arizona.'”
Yuma, Arizona.
“It was a cultural shock when I got there,” Lendeborg said. “I'm from a lot of places where there's a lot of green, a lot of buildings, and I get to Yuma and it's just a desert, you know? There's nothing else around. It was very interesting.”
After finally getting out of his room, Lendeborg said he made friends at Arizona Western who helped him adjust. It also helped that he could speak his native Spanish language around town.
So did food, especially the Yuma outlet of a fast-food chicken restaurant.
“The first time I had Canes, I fell in love with Canes from there,” Lendeborg said. “That was pretty much the only spot that we could go out to eat because it was so close. And we were all on a budget, man. So we just went to Canes. We had a lot of memories there.”
On the court, Lendeborg made a small impact while playing half of the 2020-21 season, which didn’t wind up counting toward his eligibility clock because it was affected by COVID restrictions.
So Lendeborg came back to Yuma. Twice, becoming a juco all-American each season.
From there, Lendeborg left for two seasons at UAB and, thanks to a court order allowing those who spent a year as a non-Division I athlete to play another season, used his sixth season of college basketball at Michigan.
Michigan's Yaxel Lendeborg celebrates after defeating Tennessee in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, Sunday, in Chicago.
With the Wolverines this season, he became Big Ten Player of the Year, a first-team All-American and a guy who doesn’t really think all that much about all that.
Having survived a rough past in New Jersey and Yuma by connecting with teammates who became friends, Lendeborg still leans on them today at Michigan.
“I don't know how to say it: He wants to be one of the guys,” Michigan coach Dusty May said. “They've encouraged him to be more aggressive, to shoot more, to hunt some more individual accolades all year, and he simply refused because he didn't care about any of those things.
From left to right, Michigan's Will Tschetter, Yaxel Lendeborg, Nimari Burnett speak during a news conference after defeating Tennessee in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, March 29, 2026, in Chicago.
“It's improved our environment because he's been so unselfish. But he still has no idea how good he is.”
