Michigan could not pull off the win in the Big Ten tournament final. Michigan fell to Purdue, 80-72, as they were unable to secure both the regular season and conference tournament titles.
During the game, Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg suffered an ankle sprain, but he says it is a false alarm, according to Alejandro Zungia of 247Sports.
“I know no matter how I feel, I'm going to be good to go for that game,” Lendeborg said.
Lendeborg is referring to the first round of the NCAA tournament. Michigan will play the winner of UMBC and Howard in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
“We can't feel too bad because we still have more games to play. The season isn't over yet,” Lendeborg said. “But it definitely hurts. We put a lot into this season to try to make it historic. We had another chance to do that tonight and today we didn't capitalize. But I'm still just glad that we had to have fun today and we had something to learn from this. We can't let our physicality drop or our edge or this is going to happen to us.”
Lendenborg transferred to Michigan from UAB this past year and won the Big Ten Player of the Year award. Despite the injury, Lendeborg still scored 20 points, while adding five rebounds and two assists. He was great all year long, scoring 14.4 points, and adding seven rebounds and 3.3 assists per game. He also drained the game-winner against Wisconsin in the semifinals to get Michigan to the Big Ten Championship game.
Michigan is the one seed in the Midwest region. Assuming they knock off the 16 seed, they will face the winner of Georgia and Saint Louis in the second round. Duke, Arizona, and Florida got the other three number one seeds.
