UConn’s Solo Ball, Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg both dealing with injuries heading into title game
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — UConn starting guard Solo Ball limped from room to room Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium, a protective boot on his sprained left foot. Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg didn’t even do that much because of an injured left ankle and an injured left knee.
Just one day before the teams meet in Monday night’s national championship game, the big question for both was the health of two key playmakers.
Neither was expected to practice Sunday as they focused instead on getting as much treatment as possible, even as teammates and the players themselves insisted the stars would play Monday night. The coaches, Dan Hurley and Dusty May, also tried to lighten the mood before college basketball’s biggest game of the season.
“I’m sure he’ll give it a go tomorrow, but that will be entirely up to him and the medical staff,” May said as he updated the playing status of Lendeborg, a first team All-American. “He’ll tell me if he can go and we were laughing because he played the second half, but he played the second half like a 38-year-old at the YMCA — a really good 38-year-old at the YMCA. So whatever version we get of Yaxel we get, it’s going to be somebody that helps us play better basketball.”
Lendeborg played just five minutes of the first half before getting hurt in Saturday’s 91-73 victory over Arizona, which sent Michigan (36-3) to its first title game since 2018. He finished with 11 points and three rebounds in 15 minutes and made two 3-pointers in the second half.
But he hardly resembled the guy who was named the Big Ten’s Player of the Year.
When Lendeborg was asked whether missing Monday night’s game was a possibility, Lendeborg emphatically told reporters in the locker room, “absolutely not.” He reinjured the ankle he initially hurt in the Big Ten Tournament championship game. The knee injury was a new one and Lendeborg said, at worst, he was told it was a sprained medial collateral ligament. May said MRI results came back clean Sunday.
Still, the combination prevented him from doing the traditional between-games media circuit.
While everyone saw Lendeborg’s injury Saturday’s, Ball’s injury seemed to surprise everyone including Hurley, who said he saw Ball in a walking boot before being told what happened.
Ball has played a key role in helping UConn (34-5) reach its third title game in four years, averaging 12.9 points and starting all 38 games he appeared in this season.
He scored 10 of his 13 points in the second half of Saturday’s 91-72 victory over Illinois — after getting hurt in the first half — and told reporters played through the injury on pure adrenaline. The injury occurred when Ball and teammate Tarris Reed Jr. got tangled.
“I’ve just been doing everything I can to take care of it,” Ball said Sunday. “It’s just a bump in the road, so you’ve got to keep moving forward. Pain is temporary. People say it pushes you through your toughest performance, so it’s only what you’re made of. This is the championship game.”
Hurley had other questions, though, as UConn attempts to win its third national championship in four years and the seventh in school history. The Huskies are tied with North Carolina for the third-highest total of national championships, behind UCLA (11) and Kentucky (eight).
UConn has won all six of its titles since 1999 and remains hopeful Ball will be a go on Monday.
“I think we’ll see whether this turns into — it’s going to be tough to get an MRI on Easter, on a Sunday,” Hurley said. “I don’t know what the hospitals are like in Indiana. Hospitals stay open.”
Michigan, apparently, had already resolved that issue.
But the Wolverines don’t expect Lendeborg’s injury to change their mission, snapping a four-game losing streak in NCAA Tournament title games and capturing the school’s first national title since 1989 and the second in program history. Nor do they expect it to change their game plan.
“I’ll still play the four outs,” Michigan forward Morez Johnson Jr. said. “And Yax is fine.”
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