INDIANAPOLIS — After years of junior college anonymity and mid-major hoops, Yaxel Lendeborg has blossomed into a Big Ten Player of the Year and first-team All-American in his lone season at Michigan, lifting the Wolverines to the Final Four and placing himself at the center of the college hoops universe. He’s gotten used to the crowds.
But there’s still one person who can cut through the noise.
“The majority of the times when she’s (at the game), I get a lot more aggressive,” Lendeborg said. “She has this certain calling that she does whenever I get the ball.”
His mom, Yissel Raposo, laughed at her in-game encouragement becoming a Final Four storyline.
“I just say in Spanish, ‘Vamos, Yaxel!’ You know, ‘Let’s go!’” said Raposo, who is from the Dominican Republic.
After some prodding, she reveals the real secret.
“Sometimes I do a sound with my mouth, and I know he hear me,” she said.
It’s like a clicking sound, one Lendeborg can distinguish from thousands of screaming fans.
“I can hear nobody else in the stadium but her,” Lendeborg said. “It puts me in attack mode, honestly.”
Raposo has witnessed every step of this NCAA Tournament run, including last weekend in the United Center as her son led the Wolverines with 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists in an Elite Eight blowout of Tennessee, sending Michigan to its ninth Final Four and first since 2018. That came less than 48 hours after a team-high 23 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in the Sweet 16 win over Alabama.
“Sometimes I’m at a loss for words when I think about where I am right now. I owe it all to my mom,” Lendeborg said. “It means the world to me (to have her here).”
Moms tend to be central characters. Lendeborg has made his a leading lady throughout his magical NCAA Tournament run, one of those March Madness family members who becomes a fixture on the TV broadcasts, cheering alongside Yaxel’s father, Okary Lendeborg, who’s often waving a Dominican flag.
Yaxel’s mom is LOVING it 🤩#MarchMadness @umichbball https://t.co/Db0TzQ5W6d pic.twitter.com/d3Hz6hd2gS
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 21, 2026
The sport is in Lendeborg’s DNA. The 6-foot-9, five-tool forward was born in Puerto Rico, where his mom played basketball and volleyball at American University of Puerto Rico. She and Okary, who both stand over 6-feet, each played for the Dominican Republic national basketball teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Raposo understood what her son was capable of, and the opportunities the sport could offer him — even if he couldn’t see it for himself.
“I always say, ‘Yaxel, you have talent, God gave you the talent. So you have to be good in life,’” she said. “I talk like a mom, always in a positive way because I know he has a lot of potential. He just played PlayStation and I said, ‘No, no, I don’t want this for your life.’”
He was a tall, athletic kid, but more interested in playing video games and cracking jokes in class. He didn’t start playing organized basketball until he was 15, and his grades were so bad that he wasn’t always eligible for the high school team. Raposo made him take community college classes so he could play his senior season in Pennsauken, N.J., and graduate on time.
She took Lendeborg to basketball camps. She called coaches. She got him into Arizona Western College, which Lendeborg detailed last month in an article for The Players’ Tribune. She basically dragged him from their home in New Jersey to the public community college with less than 2,000 full-time students in Yuma, Ariz., minutes from the Mexican border and a long way from any good Dominican food. Lendeborg spent three seasons there before transferring to UAB for two more, where he won back-to-back AAC defensive player of the year awards and led the Blazers to an NCAA Tournament appearance, but played in front of only 4,000 fans for most home games.
Then, finally, this season at Michigan. He passed up a chance to be a potential first-round NBA Draft pick. Millions in NIL money helped, but so did a chance to improve his game and his draft stock. And learn from head coach Dusty May. And play with a group of “super teammates.” And cut down nets.
“We all wanted to make it to the national championship and win it,” he said.
Lendeborg’s performance is a big reason why the Wolverines are in position to do so. He unlocked Michigan’s offense, the ultimate wild card for a coach with May’s extensive playbook. He’s the versatile linchpin of a big-ball bully lineup that has stuffed opponents into lockers all season, able to run fast breaks, initiate offense in the half court, shoot outside, score inside, pass, rebound, defend. He’s shooting better than 37 percent from beyond the arc on the season and has developed a lethal Euro step that has defenders backpedaling out of posters in transition.
The 23-year-old is still gaining altitude in the NCAA Tournament, where he’s averaging 21 points and 7.3 rebounds while shooting 11-for-22 from 3-point range, earning Most Outstanding Player of the Midwest Regional and burnishing his “Dominican LeBron” nickname.
“It’s improved our environment because he’s been so unselfish,” May said, “but he still has no idea how good he is.”
On-court success is not immune from off-court realities. Earlier this season, Raposo was diagnosed with appendix cancer. It upended her existence and rattled Lendeborg’s. A new hurdle, one that can’t be parented or reasoned with, but one Lendeborg is embracing with a more mature perspective.
Yaxel Lendeborg says his mom, Yissel Raposo, left, saw his potential before anyone else. Now he’s starring in the Final Four. (Justin Williams / The Athletic)
“She is my guardian angel. My hero,” Lendeborg wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “I can make sure she understands that I’m so grateful for everything she’s done.”
Raposo’s doctor allowed her to pause her chemo treatments so she could follow the Wolverines, first to Buffalo, then Chicago. She acknowledges she has good days and bad, but that getting to watch her son play is worth any struggle.
“I told Yaxel, ‘When I feel good, I wanna be around you, no matter what,’” she said. “And when I see Yaxel playing, I feel so happy, so I think God gave me that extra happiness. It’s a blessing.”
Lendeborg is a big personality. May called him a “fun-loving guy,” with an authenticity that spools out of him on the court — and has stirred up a few headlines off it. Just in the last few weeks, Lendeborg told the Associated Press that Kentucky offered him “$7 (million) to $9 (million)” when he entered the transfer portal last offseason, and said before the Sweet 16 it “bothered me a little bit” that Alabama didn’t recruit him (though May and Alabama coach Nate Oats claim the Crimson Tide did).
Then during the win over Alabama in the Sweet 16, he held his shooting pose for an extra beat on a stepback 3-pointer that left his defender flailing.
“Honestly, I kind of felt a little disrespected having a freshman guarding me,” Lendeborg said afterward, eliciting a bemused look from May, shaking his head nearby.
“We’ve had several subplots this year, and he seems to be performing well up to this point, so whatever irritates him, I’m going to ride with that and support him,” May said.
“On the court, Yax is free. Especially when he’s emotionally invested in the game, he’s at his best,” said teammate Roddy Gayle Jr., who acknowledged that he’s been tasked with keeping Lendeborg on his best behavior during media sessions. “Some of his antics may be extra sometimes, but that fuels him to be his best. You let that happen.”
The head coach has similarly embraced his star player because he also knows who Lendeborg really is. Arguably the biggest stir came in February, when an older video of a possibly overserved Lendeborg went viral, with him boasting: “When we see Purdue we gonna spank they f—ing ass! … F— Purdue!”
“I was shocked by the video because it was so out of character. I’ve probably had too many drinks a few times and done things I shouldn’t have at a bar at 3 a.m.,” May said. “I think he’s a little bit misunderstood because he’s not nearly as self-confident — I’ve even read where some have called him arrogant. That’s not who he is. It’s probably his defense mechanism. He’s as genuine a human being as I’ve been around.”
It’s obvious when Lendeborg talks about his mom. Any varnish of bravado and trash talk gets stripped away. After his Elite Eight masterclass, as parents and loved ones mingled on the court for the net-cutting ceremony, Lendeborg scanned the crowd for Raposo, a 6-foot-9 child searching for his mom. Cameras swarmed when the two finally found each other, a glassy-eyed Lendeborg insisting to no one in particular that he would not get emotional.
“None of this would be possible if it wasn’t for her helping me out and believing in me more than I believed in myself,” he said.
March makes legends in college basketball. In an NCAA Tournament lacking Cinderella upsets, Lendeborg is authoring his own rags-to-riches story, one that will go down in Michigan lore — and may even end in Indianapolis with the program’s second national championship.
Raposo said she’ll do everything she can to be there, cheering him on. Her son will be listening.
“(My mom) really dug me out of the hole that I was in,” Lendeborg said. “This is pretty much a dream come true.”