Press conferences

Dusty May and players after win vs. Wisconsin

Dusty May, Yaxel Lendeborg and Elliot CadeauAfter the gameMichigan 68, Wisconsin 65Big Ten TournamentGame page →

Watch the press conference15:31

Key quotes

  1. “And also, Yaxel Lendeborg mentioned that you said something to him at halftime.”Dusty May · Q12 ↓
  2. “Yeah, this is for sure. This is my first game winner.”Yaxel Lendeborg · Q2 ↓
  3. “He does a really good job walling up or just blocking the shot.”Yaxel Lendeborg · Q6 ↓

Transcript

Q2 Game-winning shot call

All right, let's take questions for the student athletes. Let's start all the way in the back.

Yaxel Lendeborg

Yeah, this is for sure. This is my first game winner. I've hit a couple like game tires in the overtime, but, um, the play call was for me to get the ball down low in the post. Um, I didn't do a good job sealing. EC had a driving angle. I tried to clear it out for him and he kept his composure and, you know, didn't force up a bad shot and he made the one more to an open guy and I happened to be there and make the shot.

Q6 Rim protection from Mara and Johnson

Jake Singer with SB Nation. You guys had really great rim protection today. Aday Mara had 5 blocks, you had 1, Morez Johnson had 2. Can you just talk about rim protection particularly, and also again, as they were having that onslaught with the threes, right when they started going back inside, it was really hard for them to get that momentum going because that rim protection.

Yaxel Lendeborg

Man, I think Aday Mara is the best rim protection I've ever seen in my life. He does a really good job walling up or just blocking the shot. All year we've really been relying on him down there. You know, a lot of us play aggressive defense and we were allowing, you know, him to have our back and he has been.

So him doing that and doing it on the other side of the floor too, it was really what led to this win, honestly. You know, he kept us in it when we were down.

Q12 Halftime talk with Lendeborg

Question fourth row in the back.

Dusty May

And also, Yaxel Lendeborg mentioned that you said something to him at halftime. What did you say? What was that conversation like? And how much did you feel you needed to have that conversation with him?

Actually, the staff encouraged me to and gave me a couple bullet points. And then I said them in my own words with my own delivery. The gist was that, look, we're big boys here. We can live with whatever the results are, but we're not going out like that.

We're going to be aggressive. We're not going to be afraid of failure. We're going to let it rip, being us. And if it's not good enough, then we'll go back.

We'll get on the bus tonight, go back home, and start preparing for the NCAA tournament and the draw tomorrow. But either way, we can live with the results. We're not going to let the Twitter, how much guys make, and all this other stuff affect us going after something together and doing all the difficult stuff together. Getting it all that clouded by what's really important.

And that's what they're learning right now in their journey and their process to become the absolute best versions of themselves. And when they walk out of our doors, some of them really soon, hopefully a month or so, then they're ready to make it in the real world and be productive citizens.

Transcript may contain errors; the video is the record.

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