CHICAGO — Ascending a ladder to cut the net after steering Michigan back to the Final Four, Wolverines forward Yaxel Lendeborg shouted in delight along with teammates and fans.
Once things calmed down, he took a breath to reflect.
“There’s nothing that we can’t do with the support that we have behind us,” Lendeborg said.
Lendeborg collected 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists as top-seeded Michigan routed sixth-seeded Tennessee 95-62 on Sunday in the NCAA Tournament Midwest Region final.
Michigan (35-3) advanced to the program’s first Final Four since 2018. The Wolverines will face West Region champion Arizona in a national semifinal in Indianapolis on Saturday.
“This was a goal of ours coming in and it’s great to be able to accomplish it,” Wolverines guard Elliot Cadeau said.
Tennessee (25-12) held an early lead before stumbling as the school remained in search of its first men’s Final Four appearance. The Volunteers made their third successive Elite Eight under coach Rick Barnes.
“There’s luck in everything you do,” Barnes said, “but you get to this point. … You look at their guys today, they had a lot of guys that played really good basketball, had good days. It’s hard to have a day where maybe one or two guys are off and get there.”
Michigan rolled behind 51.8% shooting while limiting Tennessee to 31.6%
Trey McKenney (12 points), Morez Johnson Jr. (12), Aday Mara (11) and Nimari Burnett (10) also scored in double figures for the Wolverines. Cadeau had eight points and 10 assists.
Ja’Kobi Gillespie led the Volunteers with 21 points and Felix Okpara added 10. Tennessee second-leading scorer Nate Ament was held to seven points, 10 below his season average, on 2-for-12 shooting before fouling out with 2:16 left.
Michigan stormed to a 21-0 run midway through the first half that essentially sealed the result.
After taking a 16-14 lead on a pair of Jaylen Carey free throws with 11:22 left before halftime, the Volunteers missed 10 consecutive shots. The Wolverines, meanwhile, rediscovered their urgency on the glass while getting their top scorer rolling.
Lendeborg needed five-plus minutes to attempt his first field goal and didn’t break the scoring column until he drove for a layup about a minute later. The Big Ten player of the year factored plenty during the Wolverines’ big spurt, though, starring with eight points that featured a 3-pointer and an old-fashioned three-point play.
During one sequence, Lendeborg took a pass from Cadeau near midcourt, darted down the right side between two defenders and finished a reverse layup amid contact from Okpara, who was whistled for his third foul.
The maize and blue backers among the crowd erupted. The ensuing free throw and 3-pointers from Roddy Gayle Jr. and Cadeau pushed the advantage to double digits with 7:52 remaining in the first half.
Burnett credited the team’s commitment to the basics for sustaining the run.
“Starting with defense. Attacking the same way,” he said. “Sharing the ball. Talking. Communicating on both ends.”
Carey ended the drought with a layup at the 5:11 mark. He led the Volunteers with eight first-half points. Lendeborg had 15 points to help the Wolverines to a 48-26 lead at intermission.
Both teams grabbed 42 rebounds. J.P. Estrella and Okpara topped Tennessee with seven apiece. Burnett added seven for Michigan.
Officials called Carey for a dead-ball technical foul with 14:02 left in the game after he bumped Johnson after a tie-up with Amari Evans of Tennessee.
Michigan went on to lead by as many as 34 points. The comfortable margin allowed coach Dusty May to play multiple reserves, including his son, Charlie, who drilled a 3-pointer in the closing minutes.
Charlie May said watching Saturday’s South and West Regional finals on television “just raised the level of excitement” for Sunday. Still, he made sure to skip a certain part of both broadcasts.
“I watched the whole game but I would turn it off before the celebration because I just wanted to experience that for myself,” May said.
Tennessee lost by 19 points to Houston in the 2025 Elite Eight and by six points to Purdue in that round the previous year. As with Michigan, those schools were the region’s No. 1 seed.
“We’ve been able to get here three years in a row, and it’ll be hard to get back to winning games just in the tournament,” Barnes said, anticipating roster turnover. “That first game of the tournament is the hardest one. But our goal would be to keep getting back and kicking and hopefully we can knock the door down.”
Michigan is eager to seize the opportunity and keep climbing.
“Just being able to make it this far and continuing to want to get more, it means a lot,” Lendeborg said. “Just means how much we’ve done together as a unit and how unselfish this team has been all year.”
–Kevin Druley, Field Level Media
