Yaxel Lendeborg played one season of varsity at Pennsauken. Now he’s Michigan’s star forward.

Yaxel Lendeborg came back to Pennsauken in December to surprise his mother with her dream car — a Jeep Wrangler.

His mother, Yissel Raposo, was the driving force behind Lendeborg’s rise from being an academically ineligible high school player to becoming a consensus All-American forward at Michigan. She had been diagnosed with appendix cancer just before the start of the college basketball season.

While Lendeborg was back in his hometown, he took some time to talk to the Pennsauken boys’ basketball team about the improbable path that led him to Ann Arbor.

His journey started with 11 varsity games as a senior at Pennsauken, from which he landed a spot on the roster at Western Arizona College, a junior college in Yuma, Ariz. After spending three years at the JUCO level, he transferred to Alabama-Birmingham, where he was a two-time All-American conference selection.

The 6-foot-9 Lendeborg transferred to Michigan as a graduate student, where he’s led the Wolverines to a regular season Big Ten title and earned the Big Ten Player of the Year award. Lendeborg’s top-seeded Wolverines (33-3) will play No. 4 seed Alabama (25-9) in the NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional final at Chicago’s United Center on Friday (7:35 p.m., TBS).

Harrison Carsillo, Pennsauken’s head coach, watched his former player address his current team. Carsillo, who was promoted to the helm in 2021 after four seasons as an assistant, coached Lendeborg on the freshman team.

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Lendeborg had never played organized basketball when he joined the freshman team. He was a “gangly” kid, Carsillo said, and he wasn’t the best shooter, but the forward was a good ball handler who had a knack for finding his teammates. However, more than halfway through the season, Lendeborg was ruled academically ineligible to participate in athletics. He had received two failing grades in the fall semester.

“He wasn’t malicious,” Carsillo said. “He was, kind of, immature, is what I’ll call it. Like, ‘I’ll get the next one,’ or ‘If I don’t pass this class, I’ll figure out what to do.’ I don’t think he truly understood at the time that you’ve got to actually do some assignments.”

Lendeborg remained academically ineligible for his sophomore and junior year, but he stayed around the basketball team as much as he could. He was not allowed to practice, but he worked out with his future teammates over the summer.

“He was super wanting to be a part of [the team],” Carsillo said. “But it was just more or less trying to get him, during those two years, to understand that there are some things you have to take care of to be able to play.”

Lendeborg’s mother insisted that he needed to graduate high school, so Lendeborg took 10 community college classes at Camden County College during his senior year. His grades improved, and he was reinstated for the second semester of his senior season.

Lendeborg played 10 regular season games and a playoff game for Pennsauken. The team started its season 3-13 but finished 12-15 after Lendeborg joined. He quickly emerged as a scoring threat for Pennsauken, posting three 20-point games in a row during a nine-game win streak.

“He was an absolute bombshell,” Carsillo said. “No one really understood what he was, because he hadn’t played a game of varsity in his entire career. But you look at his size, his speed, his handle … We haven’t had that since. It was a really incredible six-to-eight weeks.”

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Lendeborg did not intend to continue his basketball career after Pennsauken lost in the first round of the NJSIAA playoffs, but his mother tried to find a place for him on a junior college roster.

Raposo had a connection to Marc Hsu, then an assistant coach at DePaul. Hsu called Carter Roe, an assistant at Arizona Western, and let him know Lendeborg was looking for a spot.

Typically, Arizona Western’s roster would have been full by the time Hsu contacted the coaching staff, but the COVID-19 pandemic left the Matadors in need of a big man. The coaching staff informed Lendeborg he could join the team.

“Yaxel has got to be the greatest player I’ve ever gotten to coach, that was the easiest recruit,” Roe said. “Just off an email, basically. A phone call and an email. And he ends up being a kid that’s first-team all-American and a future NBA draft pick.”

Lendeborg spent three seasons at Arizona Western, including a shortened 2020-21 season. He emerged as a star in his third year, playing at power forward, center, and backup point guard for the Matadors, while averaging 17.2 points and 13 rebounds.

“Year three and end of year two here, he started dominating,” said Arizona Western coach Kyle Isaacs. “He was all over the floor for us. What he did so well here was rebounding and pursuing the ball and getting his teammates extra possessions. He was really unselfish when he was here.”

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Lendeborg continued to develop at Alabama-Birmingham ahead of the 2023-24 season. In two seasons with the Blazers, Lendeborg was named the American’s Defensive Player of the Year and an all-conference selection twice. In his final season with the Blazers, he averaged 17.7 points and 11.4 rebounds.

After graduating from Alabama-Birmingham in 2025, Lendeborg entered the transfer portal. He was the top player in the portal this past offseason, according to 247Sports, and committed to Michigan for his final year of eligibility.

Lendeborg is averaging 14.7 points for Michigan and poured in 25 points to lift the Wolverines past No. 9 seed Saint Louis in the Round of 32.

Now, he has the opportunity to lead the Wolverines to the Elite 8 and potentially the program’s first Final Four appearance since 2018.

It’s likely that the next time that Lendeborg comes back to talk to Carsillo’s team at Pennsauken, he will be an NBA player. Lendeborg is projected to be a lottery pick in this year’s draft.

“It’s been incredible to not only talk about it, to sit there and watch the games with the kids, but to have him come back and to actually tell them his story has been really good for our program,” Carsillo said. “It’s bigger than wins and losses.”