ANN ARBOR -- An exhausting 20 minutes has ended and, with a door swinging shut behind him, Spike Albrecht points out the obvious.

"Man, that was brutal," the Michigan senior says.

Caris LeVert gives a passing laugh as he glances down at his phone. Brutal, indeed. He checks to see if he missed any texts or tweets or whatever.

The last 20 minutes were spent answering un-answerable questions. How will senior day feel? What will it be like? What would this year have been like if you were healthy? In the build up to their final home game as Michigan players, Albrecht and LeVert met with reporters one last time in the strangest of circumstances.

Neither is actually going to play on senior day when the Wolverines host Iowa in a do-or-die season finale at Crisler Center (8 p.m., TV: BTN).

For Albrecht and LeVert, the afternoon of questions amounted to a bizarre eulogy of their college careers. The postmortem came because the ending is already over. Albrecht's rusty hips sidelined him back in December. LeVert wrenched his foot or his ankle in the team's Big Ten opener on Dec. 30 and never healed.

Hence, the agony. Two current college seniors spoke only in hindsight, knowing their playing days as Wolverines are done. Dylan's "Forever Young" might as well have played in the background.

"It was kind of weird," LeVert says, now well removed from the interviews, sitting alongside Albrecht in an empty Crisler Center. "I had to catch myself. I mean, really, we've gone through some things -- some hard things. But we've also had some good times. We hung some banners in here. We made it to the national championship game. We have a lot of stuff to be proud of. I think sometimes we forget that and people forget that."

LeVert appeared in 103 games in his Michigan career. The Wolverines won 77.

Albrecht played in 116. The Wolverines won 80.

This season, the two have combined to play in exactly two Big Ten game. That's it.

That's how the story ends.

Neither particularly wants to acknowledge that the circumstances are unfair. In reality, though, it's OK to admit that this wasn't what was supposed to happen. It's OK to concede that happy endings don't happen.

Albrecht and LeVert went to college and learned that basketball, and life, can giveth and taketh away.

"It is tough, everything we've gone through, and everyone talking about senior night, senior night, senior night ... it's supposed to be this great day," Albrecht says. "You're supposed to have fun, go out and get a W. The fact that neither of us will be playing? That just doesn't sit well. Not with me, at least."

Saturday night will be uncomfortable for all involved.

Spike Albrecht and Caris LeVert on March 2, 2016.

Albrecht will draw a huge roar when his name is announced. Replays will flash of that 2013 game against Louisville, the night he turned into Marty McFly with a jumper. He'll be introduced with his parents, Tammy and Charles, and embrace John Beilein. A standing ovation will rumble and sway.

When he arrived in 2012, Albrecht was supposed to be Trey Burke's backup. Beilein offered him a scholarship the same way you order a meal you can't pronounce in a restaurant you've never been to -- with uneasy optimism. No one knew what to make of him. Albrecht looked like a mousy kid, but played like pitbull.

While 2013 ended in the Final Four and 2014 ended in the Elite Eight, Albrecht's true value was revealed last year. He wasn't some little-engine-that-could. He was a basketball player. A damn good one. In an injury-plagued campaign, he carried the Wolverines to eight Big Ten wins and won team awards for co-MVP, sportsmanship, hustle, leadership and most assists. On two bum hips, he led the Big Ten in assist-to-turnover ratio (121 assists, 41 turnovers).

Toward the end of last season, Albrecht guarded future NBA lottery pick D'Angelo Russell on one end of the court, while Ohio State ran a box-and-1 to guard him on the other end. Afterward, Beilein walked in the locker room and told his freshmen, "Watch Spike Albrecht. Diving on the floor, playing at high speed, playing so hard that you can't breathe sometimes. That is what the great players do."

Great players also develop over time. That's why LeVert will draw his own standing ovation.

The 6-foot-7 guard will be introduced Saturday with his mother, Kim. They'll hug and Kim might wipe away a few tears. Mother and son have come a long way together since Darryl LeVert Sr., was found dead by Caris and his brother, Darryl Jr., on Easter morning in 2010. Caris has done just about everything mom has asked since then.

Like Albrecht, LeVert arrived at Michigan as a long shot. He was only recruited when a scholarship offer from Ohio University fell off the table in the spring of 2012. Beilein took a flier on him without ever seeing him play in person.

LeVert was skinny and babyfaced when he arrived. Beilein planned to redshirt him, but that proved futile when the freshman kept outplaying others in practice. He broke into the rotation six games into the season and ended up scoring eight points in 21 minutes in the national semifinals against Syracuse.

The next year, LeVert erupted like a rail-thin Vesuvius. He was a second-team All-Big Ten selection and starred alongside Nik Stauskas as Michigan won its first outright conference title since 1986.

Over the closing weeks of that year, though, LeVert played on a stress fracture in his left foot, leading to offseason surgery. Teammate Glenn Robinson III said at the time, "I didn't know it was that bad." No one did, really. But those foot problems would never go away. LeVert fractured the same foot in 2014-15, missing half the season, and suffered another injury this season.

All along, LeVert's NBA draft stock has hung in the balance.

"Yeah," he says, "we've been through a lot."

Resentment is a strong word and neither Albrecht nor LeVert want to hear it, but it will be hard for both look back on their college careers and wonder why theirs ended with a sideline view. The anger that comes with that will be hard to shake.

"All we can do is make the most of it," Albrecht says. "I'm not really trying to avoid or not listen to things other people are saying or the negativity or stuff like that. That's all fine. At the end of the day, I know I can wake up, look at myself in the mirror and know that I gave it everything I got for the University of Michigan."

That's a little easier for him to say. Albrecht shut his season down back in December. He's prepared himself for this day. Things are fresher for LeVert.

"I'd say I'm trying to get to the point where Spike is right now," he says. "It's been tough. I was still trying to prepare to play these last few weeks. But it just wasn't in God's plan. So I've been trying to have faith and just be comfortable moving on from this situation. I am going to try to enjoy these next few weeks."

Classes end on April 18. Graduation is in May. Both will earn degrees from U-M's College of Literature, Science & the Arts.

Albrecht, 23, doesn't know what he'll do next. He could take a stab at another year of college basketball as a graduate student, but that's a complicated matter that he's undecided on. Maybe the real world will beckon. If he wanted, he could slap his name on a car dealership in Ann Arbor and live quite comfortably for the rest of his life.

LeVert will go onto the NBA and try to stay there as long as he can. He's projected as a late-first round or early-second round pick. He needs to get in shape and go deliver at the pre-draft combine. It's a critical moment in time for the 21-year-old.

Through that lens, Saturday's meaning takes on a new form.

The ending of this story stinks.

So it's a good thing for Spike Albrecht and Caris LeVert that it's not actually the end.

"Honestly, Senior Night is a big night and everything, but we both have long futures in whatever we decide to do," LeVert says as Albrecht nods. "Looking at perspective is the biggest thing. Really, this is the start of a new beginning."

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