INDIANAPOLIS — Will Tschetter knew exactly what he was doing as No. 1 seed Michigan prepared to play Alabama in the Sweet 16. Star forward Yaxel Lendeborg had mentioned at a press conference that he was offended the Crimson Tide didn’t try to recruit him in the transfer portal after a breakout year at in-state UAB. A minor news cycle broke out over the comment, but most people probably missed that Alabama head coach Nate Oats said he did reach out, he just couldn’t afford him. That update didn’t fit Tschetter’s narrative, and he kept delivering his own message before tip-off.

“They didn’t recruit you,” Tschetter said to Lendeborg repeatedly in the pregame locker room. “That’s so messed up.”

Lendeborg came out like a man possessed. On the Wolverines’ first possession, he initiated the pick-and-roll as a ball handler, turned the corner after a screen from teammate Aday Mara, and drove hard downhill to finish through contact. A few minutes later, he ran off a screen to hit a wing three-pointer set up by point guard Elliot Cadeau. Then he took a pitch from Morez Johnson and hit a three from the top of the key after two dribbles. After consecutive rumbling transition buckets, Lendeborg drove hard again and kicked out to teammate Roddy Gayle for three.

Still, Michigan was having trouble defending Alabama’s pace-and-space attack on the other end, and trailed by two at halftime. Its season hung in the balance.

Lendeborg made sure to set the tone out of the locker room. He dropped Alabama’s Amari Allen to the floor with an ankle-breaking crossover and hit a three. He grabbed a steal and threw a frozen rope outlet pass to Nimari Burnett for the dunk. He got a putback on the offensive glass, threw an assist to a cutting Gayle for a dunk, and hit a step-back three.

Michigan survived, and its dream season was still going. As the Wolverines were making their way through the tunnel at the United Center in Chicago, Mara had some more words of motivation for his teammate.

“Dominican ‘Bron! Dominican ‘Bron,” Mara yelled as he patted Lendeborg on the head and shoulders.

Mara put it even more succinctly when asked about the impact of his star teammate.

“We have an NBA player playing for us in college,” Mara said.

Lendeborg was the best player in men’s college basketball all season long outside of Duke freshman superstar Cameron Boozer, and he has proven it during this tournament run. Dominating Alabama for 23 points, 12 rebounds, and seven assists was par for the course. He also dropped 25 points and six rebounds in the round of 32 win over Saint Louis, and 27 points, seven rebounds, and four assists in an Elite Eight rout of Tennessee to bring Michigan to its first Final Four since 2018.

The Wolverines have three NBA first-round picks in the front court, but Lendeborg is the player that makes it all work. A year ago, he was a hybrid center at UAB who played with the ball in his hands all the time. At Michigan, he’s transitioned to a wing who has to play on the perimeter to maximize Michigan’s two other star bigs in the lineup in Mara and Johnson. Lendeborg’s versatility is why the Wolverines don’t just get away with a three big look, they thrive with it.

Michigan is playing UConn in the national championship game on Monday. Lendeborg’s injury status hangs over what should be a coronation for the Wolverines. He suffered an MCL sprain in the Final Four blowout of Arizona. He’s going to play through it despite acknowledging that certain people in his circle wish he didn’t with the NBA waiting.

Lendeborg is the most unique player in college basketball: a hulking 6’9, 235-pound forward blessed with the length of an NBA center with a 7’4 wingspan, but the ability to play all over the floor on both ends. That’s just the start of it. The Michigan star is in his sixth season of college basketball after a wild journey to get here. He’ll turn 24 years old shortly after he’s drafted in June, but his development arc is unlike anything the sport has seen in recent memory.

Lendeborg’s career could have fallen apart so many times before he ever got to Ann Arbor. Somehow, he ended up exactly where he needed to be.

Lendeborg always had the genes to be a star athlete. His father and mother both played for the Dominican Republic national basketball team. His mother also played for the country’s volleyball team, and she was playing both sports when she got pregnant with him.

Still, Lendeborg was consistently kept off the court because of his bad grades. He was cut from his middle school team, and didn’t make the freshman team at Pennsauken High School after the family moved to New Jersey because he couldn’t keep up academically. He barely played organized high school basketball at all, and was mostly concerned with playing video games all day, every day.

Lendeborg’s family helped get him a spot at a showcase for Dominican players at the end of high school, and that gave him the lifeline he needed to get back on track. Coaches at Arizona Western Junior College saw a clip of him on social media, and extended their final open scholarship to him just to get another big body on the roster. Lendeborg didn’t want to leave home to go to the desert across the country, but his parents made him do it.

Basketball was finally Lendeborg’s primary focus, and his game exploded. His physical gifts were overwhelming at the junior college level, and his skill set was quickly catching up to his tools. After winning his second ACCAC Player of the Year award, he had offers from the likes of St. John’s and Houston, but he chose to go to UAB after making a strong connection with head coach Andy Kennedy.

In his first year, Lendeborg won AAC Defensive Player of the Year and AAC tournament MVP. The next year, Lendeborg led the team in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks to establish himself as the best mid-major player in the country. The NBA was interested, but after going through the combine, he decided one more year of college (and a huge NIL paycheck) from Michigan couldn’t hurt.

Lendeborg might have been a first-round pick in the 2025 draft if he turned pro. When did he know he would instead go to Michigan?

“I would say honestly it was like right after the combine,” Lendeborg told SB Nation after the Sweet 16 win. “Because I talked to a lot of the NBA guys and pretty much nobody said anything was going to be wrong with my age.”

Michigan had commitments from Aday Mara and Morez Johnson, making for a crowded front court. Could all three really start together? Lendeborg embraced the three big look, because he thought a move to the wing would only make him more appealing to the NBA even if it meant sacrificing some usage and scoring numbers.

“(The NBA) wanted to see a lot more three-pointers and a lot more versatility in my defense,” Lendeborg told SB Nation. “I tried to be more of three, because in the NBA, I’m not gonna be the superstar. I’m gonna be playing next to somebody like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and he doesn’t need me to score for him. He needs me to get stops. I just tried to figure out my role and do whatever I can do to get there.”

Lendeborg probably would have been a high-usage primary scoring option anywhere else in the country. At Michigan, he would be playing more off the ball for the first time in his life. It was a work in progress at some of those late summer practices when the team finally got together.

“At first it was more so like, where do I need to be so the rest of the guys can be successful,” Lendeborg said. “Last year it was just me going low post, catching and making a move. It’s completely different this year. I’m just trying to give space to the ball, move when the ball’s moving away. For me, it’s just working to help my teammates.”

Michigan started the year at No. 7 in the preseason AP Poll. It needed overtime to beat a bad Wake Forest team in the second game of the season. TCU took them down to the wire in their third game. The learning curve with team mostly built through the transfer portal was real.

Things clicked when the Wolverines went to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival starting on Nov. 24. Michigan drilled San Diego St. by 40 in its opener, then beat Auburn by 30, then beat No. 12 Gonzaga by 40. Suddenly, there started to be some hype that this could be all-time great team.

I asked starting point guard Elliot Cadeau when he knew this team would be really good.

“Once I realized that Yax could really play on the perimeter,” Cadeau said ahead of the national championship game. “Yax could play the point guard if he wanted to. That’s when I knew it would all work together.”

Michigan pulverized teams all year with a historically good +39.72 net-rating. Lendeborg’s counting stats took a dip from his time at UAB, but his impact stats went through the roof. He was second in the country in RAPM at +15.2, and the gap between himself and No. 3 (Illinois’ Keaton Wagler) was the same as the gap between Wagler and the No. 23 overall player. He was second behind Boozer again in BPM with a +15.5 rating that tied Zach Edey for the fifth-highest single-season mark ever, and only trailed Zion Williamson, Anthony Davis, and Sindarius Thornwell.

He also made major improvements in the exact areas the NBA was looking for. Lendeborg improved his three-point attempts per 100 possessions from 3.2 in his final season at UAB to 8.4 at Michigan, and his percentage actually went up from 36 to 38 percent. He showed the ability to defend out on the perimeter rather than acting as the big man for the Blazers. He also significantly cut down his turnovers despite more ball handling responsibility.

It was a dream season in every way for both Lendeborg and Michigan. Now they have a chance to end it with a national championship.

Lendeborg is a month older than Josh Giddey, who is in his fifth NBA season. That’s usually the type of thing that should prevent a college player from going in the lottery, but Lendeborg’s path to this point has been so unusual that it should afford him more excuses than the typical super-senior. He’s also so big, so versatile, and so skilled that his game feels like an ideal fit for the modern NBA. He’s projected as a top-10 pick in our latest 2026 NBA mock draft.

Lendeborg’s personality has come under the spotlight during this tournament run, and not always in a good way according to the outside noise. He giggles at press conferences when answering tough questions. He’s a constant goof ball. It’s not often the team’s biggest star is also the class clown, but it feels that way with Lendeborg. His Michigan teammates admitted they didn’t know how it would work when they first met him, but he quickly won them over.

“The first time we played, I’m like, can he lock in?,” Burnett told me. “Then he went out and dropped like 25, and I’m like, all right, I ain’t gonna question it no more.”

Lendeborg’s production wasn’t actually the thing that convinced his teammates that he would be a star at Michigan. It was his lack of ego on the court despite entering the program with so much hype.

“That was the first thing that I noticed when he came in, he was like look, I’m not a get 30, get 40 type of guy,” Burnett said of Lendeborg. “I want to win and I wanna get my teammates involved. I want to pass. He literally said that.

“And so to see it throughout the course of the season that he’s always committed to doing it on both ends of the floor and it’s all about winning, it’s been a beauty to play with.”

Mara again vouched for Lendeborg’s personality as a teammate.

“I think he’s an unbelievable person,” Mara told me. “He’s so unselfish. He’s funny. He’s always trying to help you.

“If he was an asshole, you could see it in his play. He’s not like that. He’s a good guy, and I’m very happy that I’m playing with him.”

Lendeborg’s life was perilously close to unraveling before he ever touched a college basketball court. His rise is proof is that the basketball apparatus will always find talent through any means necessary. It’s also proof that people can change for the better with second and third chances.

Both Lendeborg’s story and game feels more fitted for Hollywood than real life. He’s one win away from the perfect ending.

INDIANAPOLIS — Malachi Smith knew what he was getting into when he committed to UConn in the transfer portal last April. After four seasons at Dayton, Smith craved the intensity and success fostered by Dan Hurley’s Huskies. He had heard of stories of head coach’s legendary practice tirades, and it didn’t take long for him to become the focal point of one.

Hurley was instructing Smith about passing reads during an early season practice when the senior guard gave a nonchalant acknowledgement that he heard the coach’s message.

“I said, ‘OK, bet,’” Smith recalled after UConn’s thrilling 2026 Final Four victory over Illinois on Saturday night. It turned out that was a poor choice of words.

“He told me, say ‘yes, coach,’ and I said, ‘yes coach,’” Smith said. “He said no, say ‘yes fucking coach.’ And I said, ‘yes, fucking coach.’ Ever since I’ve been saying ‘yes coach’ or ‘yes sir.’”

Hurley is 40 minutes away from his third national championship in four years when UConn faces the Michigan Wolverines in the title game on Monday. The first two came pretty easily: the Huskies’ 2023 team won their six tournament games by an average margin of 20 points per game despite being a No. 4 seed. The following year’s team was even more dominant, out-scoring opponents by an average of 23.3 points in the tournament to become college basketball’s first back-to-back national champion since Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators in 2006-2007.

It didn’t always look like this year’s Huskies would be playing on the final day of the season. UConn lost to an under .500 Creighton team at home in the middle of February. A few weeks later, it lost the last game of the regular season to a terrible Marquette team that finished only 12-20 overall. UConn even entered the NCAA tournament on a sour note after it got drilled by 20 points against St. John’s in the Big East tournament championship game, which finalized its destiny as a No. 2 seed.

Hurley once again has his team peaking at the right time, even without the obvious NBA lottery talent he enjoyed two years ago with Donovan Clingan and Stephon Castle leading his team. He’s also had to keep his staff focused even after top assistant Luke Murray accepted Boston College’s head coaching job with the transfer portal already unofficially underway.

“The year hasn’t been a joyride,” Hurley said after the win over Illinois. “We haven’t been a machine of destruction. We’ve been a team that’s had to grind out games like this.”

In what ways have Hurley’s previous two national championship runs changed the head coach? Senior forward Alex Karaban, a four-year starter who is also going for his third ring, scoffed at me even asking the question.

“He hasn’t changed at all,” Karaban said. “He’s the same guy. If anything winning has only made him hungrier for more.”

It seems like every UConn player has a story about the fire that still burns inside of Hurley. When asked about the private moments they’ll remember five or 10 years from now, the Huskies couldn’t hide their smiles thinking back on their coach’s antics.

Tarris Reed didn’t dunk the ball during an early season pick-and-roll drill this winter, and Dan Hurley was completely disgusted by it. He decided the punishment would be to make the entire team run the stairs at UConn’s practice facility.

The Huskies got back to business, and Reed again finished the drill with a layup. Hurley made the team run the stairs again, only this time the whole coaching staff had to do it with them. As his players and coaches were huffing and puffing on the steps, Hurley was ranting. He’s yelling at Reed for not dunking. He’s screaming at the rest of his team for not encouraging their star teammate to dunk more often. He’s also ranting at the coaches for having the audacity to bring in players who don’t dunk the ball in practice or hold their teammates accountable to dunking.

Silas Demary was one of UConn’s biggest additions in the portal this season. Last year’s Huskies were faulty in two areas: at point guard and on defense. Demary helped fix both of those problems when he transferred in after two years at Georgia. Demary could barely hold back his laughter thinking about the first time he tasted Hurley’s wrath.

“It was in August at our first real practice,” he said. “It was a rough practice for me.”

A ball got tipped out of bounds and Demary jogged after it. Bad move.

“He was irate,” Demary recalled on Sunday ahead of the national championship game. “He was pissed off about it.”

Hurley threw a ball beyond the reach of teammate Solo Ball and told him to show Demary how UConn goes after loose balls. Ball sprinted hard after it and immediately dove on the floor to recover it. Then he made everyone get in a line as he whipped balls all over the court and made them hit the floor to dive for it.

“That was my ‘welcome to UConn moment,’” Demary said with a smile.

Jaylin Stewart thought back to a moment during his freshman season on the dominant 2024 championship team. There was a turnover in practice, and Hurley lost it. He decided to deal with this crime against basketball by laying down in the middle of the floor while play continued back and forth.

Stewart was a top-100 recruit out of high school, but he hasn’t much played in his first three years at UConn. He’s an opportunity to transfer out and find more playing time at another program every offseason, but he keeps coming back. Why?

“Coach believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”

Stewart actually found himself on the floor during a crucial stretch in the second half of UConn’s Final Four win against Illinois. The Illini were starting to make a comeback with about 12 minutes left when Stewart checked in for Karaban. Ball found him spotted up behind the arc. Stewart lined up the shot and knocked it down for a big three.

Hurley loves his players even if he also likes to show them up in practice by cursing them out and wearing his emotions on his sleeve. There may be times when Hurley’s antics start to wear thin, but overall message never gets lost.

“We want rings and not watches,” Smith said on Saturday night. (Hurley) has been saying that every day. So that just makes us lock in.”

The most anticipated big man matchup in the recent history of men’s college basketball seemed like a novelty at first. On one side, there was UConn center Donovan Clingan, who measured at 7’1¾ barefoot with a 7’6¾ wingspan, a 9’7 standing reach, and a 282-pound frame. On the other side was Purdue’s Zach Edey, who was somehow even bigger at 7’3¾ barefoot with a 7’10¾ wingspan, a 9’7 standing reach, and a 306-pound frame.

Edey tipped the jump ball to teammate Braden Smith, and the 2024 men’s national championship game was underway. At the time, it felt like hardly anyone realized it was a matchup that would dictate the future of the sport.

Even NBA scouts were comparing college basketball’s two great centers to a dying breed along the lines of an elite NFL running back. Giants like Edey and Clingan would have been a focal point at the highest levels of the game years ago, but not anymore. Now, the plodding big man was said to be a complementary piece in a small ball world defined by spreading the floor, jacking up three-pointers, and cranking the pace.

NBA teams saw Edey and Clingan dominate college basketball, but they still decided to take a 3-and-D wing with the No. 1 overall pick in that year’s draft instead. Clingan fell to the seventh pick, where skeptics questioned his conditioning and his offensive impact. Edey was a surprise selection at No. 9 overall, and was criticized as “one of the worst picks in history” by respected outlets.

A couple years later, that 3-and-D wouldn’t go in the lottery of a redraft, while Edey and Clingan should both be locks for the top-5, and may even go No. 1 and No. 2. Their most immediate legacy, though, comes in how they’ve shaped college basketball in the short time since they’ve left.

All sports are copycat leagues, and college basketball is no exception. Top programs haven’t hid their desire to get bigger since Clingan and Edey ran roughshod over the sport, and their fingerprints are all over the 2026 Final Four.

The Michigan Wolverines targeted three players who played center for their previous teams, and put them all together in the starting lineup to form college basketball’s best front line. The Arizona Wildcats’ success starts with Lithuanian center Motiejus Krivas, who is listed at 7’2, 260-pounds, with a 7’5 wingspan. The Illinois Fighting Illini have the tallest team in the country according to KenPom with an average height of 80 inches, or 6’6.5. The UConn Huskies needed a miracle to knock out college basketball’s second tallest team, Duke, in the Elite Eight, but they wouldn’t be here without star center Tarris Reed and his reported 7’5 wingspan and 260-pound frame.

Point guard has long been considered the most important position in men’s college basketball. It sure doesn’t feel that way after watching this season.

How did giants take back college basketball? You first have to start with the idea of scarcity.

The average height in the United States is 5’9. Roughly one percent of the men on Earth are 6’4. At this point in basketball history, a player who is 6’4 is probably a point guard. Breakout freshman sensation Keaton Wagler will run the show for Illinois in the Final Four at 6’6. If the guards are getting bigger, it only makes sense the big men should be, too.

To find more modern centers, college basketball coaches had to start looking in different places. The international basketball boom is a direct result of the Dream Team from the 1992 Olympics, and only recently have foreign-born players started to take over college basketball. Some coaches were on it earlier than others.

“We scoured the earth for size,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said during the 2024 Final Four. “We try to go out there and get it because it’s proven, if you can work with it.”

Painter’s peers have started catching on. Michigan’s starting center Aday Mara was born in Zaragoza, Spain, and he stands 7’3 with a reported 7’7 wingspan. Illinois went to the Balkins to secure commitments from twins Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivisic, who are both listed at 7’2 but shoot three-pointers like wings. Arizona found Krivas in Lithuania, where he had already played Euroleague minutes for his club Zalgiris before coming to campus.

The next step ties into how analytics have changed the way coaches and evaluators view the game, and this time it’s a little more nuanced than three points being worth more than two. For years, NBA coaches bypassed attacking the offensive glass because they believed it hurt their teams’ transition defense. As recently as 2020-21 season, only one team posted an offensive rebound rate above 30 percent. This year, 16 teams are above 30 percent in offensive rebounding rate, with four more on the cusp. The reason is because the numbers showed that the death of transition defense was greatly exaggerated by crashing the glass.

These days, the possession game feels just as vital as three-point volume, if not more so. Want to increase your possessions? Hit the offensive glass. The best way to do it is by having bigs with a length and strength advantage over their opponents. Of course, having players who don’t turn the ball over and routinely get to the free throw line helps, too.

The final piece is the transfer portal. Coaches used to wait for years for big men to develop. Now, they can let or smaller or lesser program handle the growing pains of those early years before college basketball’s top dogs hand-pick the players they want in the transfer portal every offseason.

“We used to recruit guys for three years and spend 200 man hours away from our families begging these 15 to 18 year olds to come play at our university, and then they’d decide to go in another direction,” said May ahead of the Final Four. “Think about all the time and resources you wasted. Recruiting has definitely been streamlined and it is much more efficient than it’s ever been.”

May got Mara from UCLA after he languished on Mick Cronin’s bench for two years. Illinois got ‘Big Z’ Ivisic after stops at Kentucky and Arkansas under John Calipari. Texas made the Sweet 16 this season with breakout 7-footer Matas Vokietaitis as a driving force a year after he started his college career at Florida Atlantic. No. 1 seed Florida’s elite front court was bolstered by bringing in Rueben Chinyelu and his 7’8 wingspan from Washington State.

All these factors and more have led to the big man being back in vogue in college hoops. This may just be the start.

Kentucky coach Mark Pope might have accidentally coined a defining term of college basketball’s big man obsession back in December when asked about what he expected when his team matched up with Rick Pitino’s St. John’s squad.

“Smash. Mouth. Basketball,” Pope said. “I think it’s gonna be really fun and ugly and gruesome and brutal and violent. It’s awesome. It’s great. It won’t be (that style) forever; it’s just for now. Just for now.”

The biggest teams in college basketball thrived this year. The teams that weren’t quite big enough enter the offseason doing everything they can to get more size. Look at the Houston Cougars, whose 6’8 big men were overwhelmed by Illinois’ big men in the Sweet 16. Next season, Kelvin Sampson has five-star recruit Arafan Diane — listed at 7’1, 300 pounds, with a 7’4 wingspan — coming in to take over in the middle.

Arizona wouldn’t be in the Final Four without point guard Jaden Bradley, but he’s also only fourth on the team in BPM. If Michigan falls short of a national championship, it will probably be because their guard play can be a little shaky. UConn’s best player has been its center, and Illinois’ raw size feels every bit as important as Wagler’s rise to their success. The best teams in the country not to make the Final Four this season — Florida and Duke — also bludgeoned their opponents with size all season long.

Most of the best players in college basketball history are bigs. Start with George Mikan and Bill Russell, go to Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, stop at Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon, and continue with Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan, Anthony Davis, and now Edey. Wanting size isn’t exactly a new trend, but it suddenly feels more important than ever as teams have learned about the limits of small ball and the thin margins of volume three-point shooting. Arizona ranks No. 362 out of 265 DI teams in three-point rate this year, but it hasn’t mattered because they run over everything in their path with size, strength, and athleticism.

It’s been said that wins are a point guard stat in college basketball. There’s certainly some truth to it — but after watching the sport this year, would anyone really take a star point guard ahead of a star big man?