Biggest takeaway from Dusty May’s first year with Michigan basketball
Tony and Andrew talk the unexpectedly successful first year of the Dusty May era for U-M hoops and how the coach is already gearing up for next year
The most coveted transfer portal target in all of college basketball is officially on his way to Ann Arbor.
Yaxel Lendeborg, the former UAB star forward who tested the professional waters and went to the NBA combine earlier this month has opted to run it back once more in college, this time with Michigan basketball.
The 6-foot-9, 240-pound senior was on the fence about leaving for the NBA, but the expectation was if he didn’t essentially get a guaranteed first round grade, he would return to the NCAA ranks to boost his stock ahead of the 2025-26 season. Now, that’s become a reality.
U-M coach Dusty May and Co. secured the pledge from the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year in early April, after he finished the 2024-25 season as a first team all league selection, as he averaged 17.7 points, 11.4 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.7 steals and 1.8 blocks in 37 games.
The Free Press first reported that Lendeborg took a visit to Ann Arbor the final weekend of April and by all accounts on his social media − where he not only shared pictures and videos from the visit, but changed his profile picture to that in the maize and blue − things went swimmingly. Now, as much was confirmed.
Lendeborg is seen as a replacement for Danny Wolf, U-M’s star forward who left after one season and is expected to go in the top-20 of the NBA draft this summer. The hope for Lendeborg is he works with the transfer big men in Aday Mara and Morez Johnson much like the Wolverines’ “Area-51” duo last year.
This is the last major move, and the largest, of what’s been an incredibly busy offseason for the Wolverines. U-M landed not only Lendeborg, but former five-star point guard Elliot Cadeau (North Carolina), former five-star center Mara (UCLA) and former top-40 big man Johnson (Illinois).
The Wolverines also brought back Nimari Burnett, Roddy Gayle Jr., Will Tschetter and L.J. Cason and added four freshmen in McDonalds All-American Trey McKenney, four stars Winters Grady and Oscar Goodman and three-star wing Patrick Liburd.
Michigan also lost some a number of pieces via the portal in Tre Donaldson (Miami), Justin Pippen (Cal), Sam Walters (SMU), Jace Howard (Fordham) and Durral ‘Phat Phat’ Brooks (TBD), but with the addition of Lendeborg, the Wolverines will almost certainly be a top-10 team entering next year, with some publications and rankings likely slotting them inside the top five.
Tony Garcia is the Michigan Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
