{"id":591722,"date":"2026-04-07T18:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591722\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T18:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:05:12","slug":"elliot-cadeau-named-final-fours-most-outstanding-player-after-leading-michigan-past-uconn-to-national-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/591722\/","title":{"rendered":"Elliot Cadeau named Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player after leading Michigan past UConn to national title"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Michigan\u2019s best player was dealing with an injury and was admittedly off throughout the Final Four<\/a>, Elliot Cadeau more than stepped up and filled the void in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s headed home with an extra trophy in hand.<\/p>\n

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Shortly after leading Michigan to a national championship on Monday night<\/a>, Cadeau was named the Final Four\u2019s Most Outstanding Player.<\/p>\n

Cadeau dropped a game-high 19 points in Michigan\u2019s win on Monday night while shooting 5-of-11 from the field. That marked his highest-scoring game of the tournament. He had a double-double with 13 points and 10 assists in Michigan\u2019s blowout win over Arizona in the semifinals on Saturday night, too. While Aday Mara was the leading scorer against the Wildcats with his 26 points, Cadeau controlled the game and put up double-digit assists. He averaged 7.5 assists throughout the tournament.<\/p>\n

Cadeau transferred into Michigan last summer after spending his first two years at North Carolina. He averaged a career-high 10.3 points per game this season with 5.9 assists and 2.7 rebounds per contest while helping the Wolverines dominate in the Big Ten and claim a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n

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Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg<\/a>, the Big Ten\u2019s Player of the Year, was limited in Monday\u2019s title game after he sprained his MCL and rolled his left ankle in their semifinal matchup with Arizona. While he played on Monday night, he struggled at times and even admitted at halftime that he \u201cfelt awful.\u201d He just wasn\u2019t himself.<\/p>\n

But Cadeau once again stepped up and got the job done for Michigan.\u00a0 Cadeau and the Wolverines held on in the final minutes to beat UConn 69-63 on Monday night<\/a> at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. That gave them their first national championship since 1989. Lendeborg added 13 points, and Morez Johnson finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Michigan went just 2-15 from behind the arc.<\/p>\n

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Alex Karaban led UConn with 17 points and 11 rebounds. The Huskies, who stunned Duke in the Elite Eight to even make the Final Four before beating Illinois on Saturday night, went 9-of-33 from the 3-point line.<\/p>\n

The Wolverines\u2019 win also made history for the Big Ten conference, which now also currently holds national titles in football and women\u2019s basketball after UCLA beat South Carolina in the women\u2019s NCAA championship<\/a> on Sunday afternoon. Michigan\u2019s championship marks the first in men\u2019s basketball for the conference since 2000, when Tom Izzo led Michigan State to a title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Michigan\u2019s best player was dealing with an injury and was admittedly off throughout the Final Four, Elliot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[71661,110374,64,63,726,71673,9286,934,8440,285593,288926,31659,8447,85,8451,2277,143067,275299],"class_list":{"0":"post-591722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-aday-mara","9":"tag-alex-karaban","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-elliot-cadeau","14":"tag-illinois","15":"tag-indianapolis","16":"tag-michigan","17":"tag-morez-johnson","18":"tag-ncaa-march-madness","19":"tag-north-carolina","20":"tag-south-carolina","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-ucla","23":"tag-uconn","24":"tag-wolverines","25":"tag-yaxel-lendeborg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}