Yaxel Lendeborg and the Michigan Wolverines are having a tremendous season. The Wolverines finished the regular season at 31-3 overall, including 19-1 in conference play, where they set a record by being the first team ever to beat all 17 Big Ten teams in a single season. Michigan enters the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest region.
Michigan has been dominant this year, in large part due to the play of Lendeborg. The senior forward from New Jersey leads the team in points per game at 14.6, steals per game at 1.2, and minutes per game at 30.2. He started his college career at Arizona Western before transferring to UAB for the 2023 season. After spending two seasons with the Blazers, he entered the 2025 transfer portal, joining Michigan as the No. 1 overall player in the portal.
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Lendeborg made news on Monday when he announced he had turned down an NIL deal from Kentucky worth seven to nine million dollars to stay with Dusty May and the Wolverines. This does not mean that money is not of concern for the Michigan star, as the senior made a new NIL announcement in the heat of March Madness.
On Wednesday, amid the NCAA Tournament, Lendeborg took to social media to announce a new partnership with CAVA. In a video posted on Instagram, Lendeborg is first shown doing a casual dunk. He then turns to the camera, asking them to watch a new dunk he is working on. The drama builds as the camera rolls without a cut, and right before he goes up for the dunk, he drops the ball and picks up a CAVA bowl. The clip finishes with a series of impressive dunks by the Wolverines' star.
The Michigan star also gets his own custom CAVA bowl, called Yaxel's Game Day Bowl, which is a new menu item available now. From the company website, the meal is described as "A simple yet powerful bowl perfect for game day! Grilled steak on Super Greens and brown rice with double tzatziki, fiery broccoli, fire-roasted corn, feta, avocado, and balsamic date dressing."
"My new favorite dunk isn’t at the rim, it’s with @cava tzatziki 🤝" Lendeborg wrote on Instagram. "Check out my custom bowl on the CAVA app now #cavapartner".
Michigan will face the No. 16 seed Howard Bison on Thursday at 7:10 p.m. ET at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York.
