Elliot Cadeau Wins Final Four Most Outstanding Player

INDIANAPOLIS — Elliot Cadeau paraded around the confetti-covered court at Lucas Oil Stadium, cradling the national championship trophy in his arms. A swarm of reporters followed close behind but couldn’t ever catch up.

An hour before, Michigan had secured the second NCAA title in school history with a 69-63 win over UConn. Thirty minutes before, Cadeau, who put up a game-high 19 points, had been named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player.

For all the buzz surrounding Michigan’s loaded frontcourt, it was the team’s 6-foot-1 junior point guard who stole the show Monday. Cadeau’s success in Indianapolis, and throughout the 2025-26 campaign, is a perfect example of what’s possible when a player finds the right home at the right time of his career. Last March, Cadeau had just wrapped up a disappointing season at North Carolina and was being labeled by many as a bust.

But there he was Monday night, holding a trophy with a championship hat — adorned with a fragment of the net — on his head. He took the hardware to the Michigan student section and lifted it triumphantly above his head. He brought it to the team’s cheerleaders and posed with them for a photo. He wandered aimlessly, soaking up the moment. “I’m going to do media later,” he said, as writers and photographers continued their chase.

Asked (on the move) by Hoops HQ to sum up how he’s feeling, Cadeau said, “It’s just surreal. All the hard work I put in, it just feels great.”

Cadeau’s mother, Michelle, watched the celebration with a big smile. She struggled to find the words to describe what it was like to see her son shine on this stage. “It’s amazing,” she said. “Amazing … times a billion.”

A native of West Orange, N.J., who became a five-star recruit at Link Academy in Branson, Mo., Cadeau’s first two college seasons at North Carolina were a roller coaster. He showed flashes of stardom, but his shot was inconsistent and he had trouble taking care of the basketball. As a freshman, he shot 41.7 percent from the field and 18.9 percent from three. As a sophomore last season, he averaged 3.1 turnovers per game on a UNC team that stumbled to a 23-14 record.

Still, Cadeau was highly sought-after when he entered the 2025 portal. The potential clearly was there for him to blossom in a different setting. “This is the first time we’re telling anybody this, but he was between UConn and Michigan,” Michelle told Hoops HQ. “Those were his last two.”

Cadeau ultimately was sold on Michigan because of coach Dusty May’s style, the players that the program was planning to bring in and how good he believed the Wolverines could be.

“I think the big thing for Elliot and for us was hearing Dusty talk about the other players that were coming and their unselfishness,” Michelle said, “and that everybody that was coming onto this team had to make a sacrifice. It might have been going to the NBA, taking a pay cut, coming off the bench, whatever. You have to be special players to be willing to make sacrifices for the better of the team. And that’s who Elliot is and has been his entire life, so we knew that this would fit him.”

May and his staff felt confident in the fit, too. Michigan was searching for the consummate floor general to complement its other pieces. “We had seen him in prep ranks and we had seen him in high school ranks and we felt like we needed a quarterback, a pass-first quarterback on the floor at all times,” May said, adding that Cadeau got a stamp of approval from UNC assistant Sean May. “He’s a savant. He’s brilliant. He’s made us better coaches, and hopefully we’ve helped him become a better player.”

Cadeau approached this season as a blank slate, a fresh start, a new chapter. And he was determined to make the most of it. “He wanted to go somewhere and just start over almost,” Michigan assistant coach Drew Williamson told Hoops HQ. “And he did. When he came, the first day he was in the gym that night getting up shots. His thought process was to get better day by day.”

Working with Michigan’s staff and playing alongside a stellar frontcourt trio that’s been compared to Space Jam’s Monstars (senior forward Yaxel Lendeborg, sophomore forward Morez Johnson Jr. and junior center Aday Mara), Cadeau turned into one of the Big Ten’s top guards. His three-point percentage increased, his turnovers decreased and he became the “quarterback” the Wolverines needed to reach the mountaintop.

“I just saw so much talent around me since Day 1,” Cadeau said. “Just a unique set of talent. Three bigs at the same time, switching 1 through 4. I just saw a unique type of basketball that we were playing, and I knew it would be a mismatch nightmare for every single team that we played.”

Cadeau filled the stat sheet in Michigan’s 91-73 national semifinal win over Arizona on Saturday: 13 points, 10 assists, 5 rebounds, 4 steals, 3-of-7 from deep. His overall shooting percentage (29.4) and turnovers (6) were a bit deceiving against the Wildcats. Three of his cough-ups came in the last two minutes with the game decided and, as May later revealed, a few of Cadeau’s missed shots actually were passes off the backboard to Mara. “We felt like the only way we could get the ball to Aday versus their two-on-two drop coverage was to shoot it over the rim and hit the weak side of the backboard,” May said.

In Monday’s championship game, Cadeau immediately asserted himself, dropping a dime to Johnson for Michigan’s first basket, then scoring seven of his team’s next nine points.

Amid Michigan’s 15-8 run to open the second half, Cadeau rattled off eight points, including the Wolverines’ first three-pointer of the night at the 12:56 mark.

His 19 points matched his season high and made him the obvious choice for Most Outstanding Player. Considering where Cadeau was a year ago, it is an amazing– times a billion – feat.

“He had a moment where he could have given in and he didn’t,” Williamson said. “He just made a change to a new school. And I think it’s his character and who he is as a person that turned into this moment.”

“It means the world to me,” Cadeau said. “I’m just so proud of myself, where I came from. Last year, I was really down on myself, a lot of people doubted me, and I’m just so proud of myself to be able to say I was the Most Outstanding Player and won a national championship.”