CHICAGO – Where was Yaxel Lendeborg?

The Big Ten player of the year was nearly invisible on the scoring sheet in Michigan basketball’s quarterfinal opener against Ohio State, and then again in the first half of a tight semifinal against Wisconsin at United Center on Saturday, March 14.

Then Lendeborg emerged. The true Lendeborg who has had so many big moments this season had one more, perhaps his biggest, when he appeared at the elbow with the clock ticking down.

Lendeborg took Elliot Cadeau’s pass and calmly launched a 3-pointer that swished in for the winning score with 0.4 seconds left. The Wolverines won, 68-65, improved to 31-2, and advanced to Sunday’s final against the winner of the Purdue-UCLA semifinal.

FRIDAY’S ACTION: Michigan basketball will fall short if Yaxel Lendeborg can’t step up

A day earlier, Cadeau said the Wolverines were the best team in the country even when Lendeborg wasn’t scoring. But on this day, it was clear U-M needed its best player in a showdown with the hot-shooting Badgers, who made 16 3-pointers (besting the 15 3s they made when they beat Michigan in Ann Arbor in January).

Austin Rapp led Wisconsin with 18 points and took over the game late, making five consecutive 3-pointers to pull Wisconsin ahead, 62-58, with 3:50 left. The Australian almost single-handedly erased the 54-39 lead Michigan built by coming out hot after from a 28-28 tie at halftime.

Wisconsin should have come in tired – and probably too tired to make so many 3s – after going to overtime against Illinois in Friday’s quarterfinal.

But feisty point guard Nick Boyd refused to even entertain the idea of fatigue or the need for rest.

“Ain’t no rest, you know what I’m saying? No rest,” he said Friday. “You’ve got to keep going. You get to play –Michigan, right? No. 3 or No. 2 team in the country. By the time you get out there and the lights is bright, ain’t nothing to think about.

“You talk about rest? We’ll play X amount of games and you’ve got to come out fighting. If you’re not excited and ready to go for a game like tomorrow, don’t even lace ’em up.”

Well, the Badgers laced ’em up, all right. And their footwear looked more like jackboots than sneakers as they started putting their foot on the Wolverines’ throats early, burying 3 after 3.

Even though the first half felt a lot more like a brick show to start off, Wisconsin established its perimeter offense early and started to distance itself from Michigan midway through the first stanza.

The Badgers were again spectacular on 3-pointers, hitting seven of 17 attempts – 41.2% – compared to the Wolverines’ 26.7%: four makes on 15 attempts.

Two days before federal authorities say Ayman Mohamad Ghazali carried out Thursday’s antisemitic terror attack at a synagogue outside Detroit, the driver in the car-ramming violence allegedly walked out of a fireworks store with more than $2,000 worth of explosives.

Speaking exclusively with NBC News, Phantom Fireworks said that a person who registered as Ayman Ghazali visited one of the company’s Detroit-area stores at 1:39 p.m. March 10 and spent about 45 minutes inside.

Days later, Ghazali allegedly rammed a pickup into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, setting off a fire at the synagogue where a preschool attended by more than 100 children was in session, officials said. None of the children or staff members were injured.

Ghazali, a Dearborn Heights resident, was killed by the synagogue’s security team following the attack.

The FBI on Friday said that Ghazali was “forensically confirmed” as the assailant. Prior, officials said they believed he was the synagogue attacker, but were awaiting forensics as the driver’s body was badly burned.

Ghazali had no previous criminal history, no registered weapons, and he had never been the subject of a FBI investigation, Jennifer Runyan, the Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit field office, said in a news briefing Friday.

She did not speak on a motive for the attack, but the FBI has previously said it is investigating the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”

Officials did not mention what caused the fire, but in the vehicle, investigators found multiple gas canisters and consumer mortar tubes that would be used to launch fireworks, according to two senior officials briefed on the investigation.

The fireworks purchase was one of several facts about Ghazali’s background leading up to the attack that came into focus Friday.

Ghazali, a U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon, lost several family members in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last week, according to local officials in Michigan. The strike killed two of his brothers, who were known to be members of Hezbollah, and his niece and nephew, an official told NBC News.

Investigators are looking into Ghazali’s possible ties to suspected members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to a source familiar with the matter. He had been questioned several times about these possible contacts upon his return to the U.S. from overseas, the source said.

In recent weeks, hundreds of people in Lebanon have been killed and more than 750,000 people displaced amid escalating Israeli attacks, which were launched after Hezbollah struck Israel in retaliation for the war on Iran.

In Michigan, Alan Zoldan, Phantom Fireworks’ executive vice president, said the store employee who rang up Ghazali’s order recalled that “he certainly had no appearance of nervousness.”

“He was going to be celebrating Eid, you know, the end of the Ramadan,” Zoldan said. Eid al-Fitr, a holiday celebrated by Muslims to mark the end of the fast, is next week.

Phantom Fireworks said it requires all customers to register their identification before making a purchase. After the synagogue attack, the company found Ghazali’s name and address in its records, which it said federal investigators requested by subpoena.

Video Phantom Fireworks shared with NBC News shows the man who identified himself as Ghazali, 41, walking into the store and registering his identification at the front desk before he starts shopping. About 15 minutes later, he walks up to the register with a mostly full cart, fills out paperwork and begins checking out. Once all the items are scanned and on the counter, he turns the cart around and continues shopping for roughly 5 more minutes.

About 20 minutes later, footage shows the man pushing the cart out of the store to a waiting pickup. He loads the truck bed, hands the cart off to the store employee and drives off.

Ghazali bought roughly 20 types of items from Phantom Fireworks, including a “finale rack” product that the company says should be lit with people at least 100 yards away.

It’s not clear if fireworks purchased from this store were used in the synagogue attack.

The company also said that a $2,000 purchase is not inherently noteworthy.

“For our, you know, biggest customers that are going big at home — which we have so many of — spending $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 happens repeatedly … $5,000 and $10,000 is actually pretty common,” said Phantom Fireworks vice president Jessi Dragoiu.

Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun condemned the attack Friday, saying: “We do know that the individual had recently suffered devastating and personal losses overseas due to an Israeli air strike on his family’s home in Lebanon, leaving two children dead. Grief is real, and it’s heartbreaking, but let me be clear, that is not an excuse.”

Dearborn Heights police chief Michael Guzowski said any relevant records and background information were shared with investigators. He said there’s no credible information indicating an ongoing threat to residents and the city has increased monitoring as a precaution.

In a news briefing on Friday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the attack an act of antisemitism.

“It was hate, plain and simple,” Whitmer said at the briefing. “We will fight this ancient and rampant evil. We will stand together as we do it, and we will call it out. We must lower the rhetoric in this state and in this country, especially at this moment where we have seen such a rise in anti-Semitism and more attacks on the Jewish community.”

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office referred NBC News to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment on this story.