Ailing Yaxel Lendeborg did his best, but it was Elliot Cadeau who pushed Michigan to the top
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Ailing Yaxel Lendeborg did his best, but it was Elliot Cadeau who pushed Michigan to the top originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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INDIANAPOLIS – The Most Outstanding Player Award, ideally, is presented to the most outstanding player at the NCAA Final Four. Makes sense, right? So it never was going to belong to Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg on this night at Lucas Oil Stadium. Outstanding? Hey, he was pleased merely to be standing.
How did he look as he celebrated the Wolverines’ 69-63 victory over UConn, the Wolverines’ first NCAA Championship since Glen Rice shot them into history all the way back in 1989? Lendeborg was joyful, elated, flashing the smile that has come to define his personality throughout the 2026 edition of March Madness.
He stood his ground, though. There was no jumping or dancing or bouncing around. He hugged his teammates. He high-fived them after the sportsmanlike handshakes with the Huskies. He did nothing to make obvious the sacrifices that were made Monday night, but subtly reminded those of us watching closely he had played hurt, but ferociously.
“Absolutely, yes,” Lendeborg told The Sporting News. “I tried to show that I was excited, I was happy, just share a moment with my teammates. But I couldn’t do too much jumping around.”
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Michigan point guard Elliot Cadeau, the player who was presented the MOP trophy, was in the middle of that group hug, and he was bouncing with the knowledge that he’d overcome so many doubts about his potential to become a championship point guard, including his own.
He scored 19 points, gaining a significant portion of that at the foul line, making such clever plays as suckering UConn point guard Silas Demary into the air with a pump-fake and then going up to draw a 3-point shooting foul. Cadeau also completed two muscular drives to the goal that resulted in and-1 opportunities, one of which he converted. Ultimately Demary was disqualified having played just 21 minutes, and shooting guard Solo Ball was limited to 17 minutes because of foul issues.
Cadeau’s honor was announced on the platform by Turner Sports’ Ernie Johnson, and the crowd immediately chanted, “MVP”. It’s MOP at the Final Four, but the misspelling did not dim Cadeau’s delight.
“It means the world to me. I’m just so proud of myself, where I came from,” Cadeau said. “Last year, I was really down on myself, a lot of people doubted me. And I’m just so proud of myself for me to be able to say I was the Most Outstanding Player and win a national championship at the same time.”
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The doubts about Cadeau were there from the moment he committed to Michigan before last year’s champion even was decided. How was the guy who busted at North Carolina, who presided over perhaps the least qualified team ever selected for the NCAA Tournament – how was that guy going to make the Wolverines better?
“We had seen him in the prep ranks, and we felt like we needed a quarterback: a pass-first quarterback on the floor,” May told SN. “Once we got him, we were able to sell him.”
Two decades ago, on the summer circuit, May had coached Sean May, who was a North Carolina assistant coach when Cadeau played there. So he made contact when Cadeau showed up in the portal.
“I said let me ask you one question: Would 17, 18-year-old Sean May – McDonald’s All-American, NBA player, All-American – would he want to play with Elliot Cadeau?” Dusty May said. “And he said an expletive yeah. I said, ‘That’s all I need to know.’ ”
The public doubt escalated, though, as that massive, monstrous frontcourt began to assemble in Ann Arbor. First it was 6-10 Morez Johnson from Illinois, then 6-9 Lendeborg from UAB and, a bit later, 7-3 Aday Mara from UCLA. The Wolverines were starting to resemble a team with serious Final Four intentions, but Cadeau, who had to work his way from 18 percent long-distance shooting as a freshman to 33.7 in his second season, how would that go?
And when Michigan traveled to Northwestern in February and played so miserably against a team that wound up with 15 wins, and May had to bench Cadeau and go with reserve L.J. Cason to climb from a 13-point deficit to a 12-point victory, at last there was the assurance that Cason’s sturdy play provided insurance against any additional Cadeau misadventures.
Until Cason blew out his knee in early March.
So then the Wolverines weren’t just lacking an outstanding backup, probably the best in Division I, they had no reserves at the point guard position whatsoever.
You are to be forgiven if you believed, at that point, this night never would come.
I hope you can be forgiven for thinking this, because I surely did.
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“We have Trey McKenney and Roddy Gayle and Yaxel Lendeborg, those three being able to bring the ball up no matter what,” backup power forward Will Tschetter told SN. “We’ve got four or five point guards on our team.”
Understand, that’s a freshman shooting guard, a senior small forward and a senior small forward who’d been converted from playing center and power forward just this year. Tschetter is a leader and believes in his teammates, but it was remarkable they survived Cadeau’s 10 minutes of rest against UConn.
“All year, we’ve been just finding ways to win,” Cadeau said. “We made two threes the whole game. We weren’t making shots. You learned. We’ve constantly just been finding ways to win all year, no matter how anybody’s playing.”
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On so many occasions, that was because Lendeborg rarely played anything but exceptionally. That was until one single play in Saturday’s semifinal victory against Arizona left Lendeborg with an injury list long enough to cover an NFL team after a savage Sunday. On a drive from the foul line, he’d accidentally stepped on an opponent’s sneaker and thus was thrown off balance and crashed to the court. That left him with a sprained ankle, a bone bruise on inside of his knee and something squirrely with his lateral collateral ligament that he never quite ascertained.
“It was a bunch of pinchy feelings in my leg all day,” he said. “I was like 50 percent all game. I tried to save myself to make a push in the end. We got the win, so I’m just glad we got it done.”
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To understand why Lendeborg would have to explain away a performance in which he only left the court for four minutes and scored 13 point, it was necessary to understand how comprehensively great he was throughout the season. At the very least, he was the best defensive player in college basketball who won zero defensive player of the year awards. He was UM’s leader in scoring and steals and No. 2 in rebounds, blocks and assists.
On this night, he managed only two rebounds, missed all five of his 3-point attempts and also offered some curious layup attempts. In the second half, though, he began to at least attempt to demonstrate the unyielding dynamism and energy that made him a Sporting News first-team All-American. He scored 9 points after the break and grabbed all 3 of his rebounds.
“I knew I wasn’t going to miss this game no matter what was going on. I was very tentative. I felt like I was pretty much holding my team down,” Lendeborg said. “I kept having opportunities to make plays and I couldn’t make a play. But these guys stuck with me. They all believed in me.
“I was trying to push through my mental and physical battle. These guys really helped me out. They helped me push through.”
At one point in he second half, Lendeborg departed the game obviously frustrated with the limitations the injuries had imposed on his game. It was Cason who approached him and presented the encouragement to help him cope, to help him finish as a champion.
“He was telling me to stop being so hard on myself,” Lendeborg said. “He was basically saying I’m one of the reasons why we’re here, one of the biggest reasons we got to this moment … He was telling me to keep going no matter what.”
Lendeborg would not end the night as MOP or MVP or even All-Tournament.
He is a champion, though.
That will be his long after the ache in his knee abates.
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