2025-26 Player Power Rankings: Elliot Cadeau

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Over the last few years, we’ve borrowed an idea from Adam Jardy of the Columbus Dispatch to roll out our season preview player profiles in a power-ranking format. We’ll preview every player on the roster while ranking them by some arbitrary combination of ability, importance, and role.

We’re bringing the same thing back this season. I ranked each scholarship player (1 through 13) based on their expected impact on the 2025-26 season, and we’ll dive into each player in-depth as we near tip-off.

Next up is North Carolina transfer point guard Elliot Cadeau.

Previously: No. 5 Nimari Burnett, No. 6 Roddy Gayle Jr., No. 7 LJ Cason, No. 8 Trey McKenney, No. 9 Will Tschetter, No. 10 Winters Grady, No. 11 Oscar Goodman, No. 12 Malick Kordel and No. 13 Ricky Liburd 

No. 4: Elliot Cadeau

#3 | 6-1, 180 pounds | Junior | Point Guard

You won’t find many college basketball fans with a neutral opinion of Elliot Cadeau. It feels like every step of his journey has been loud—his play, his hype, his quarter million social media followers, and the fanbase who watched him.

As a high schooler, Cadeau was known as the best point guard prospect in his class and reclassified up a year to join North Carolina. He quickly earned the starting point guard role, helping North Carolina to a No. 1 seed, ACC Championship, and Sweet Sixteen appearance.

As a sophomore, things started to spiral a bit in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels went from preseason top ten to the First Four, and Cadeau’s perceived lack of development became something of a scapegoat for the Tar Heel faithful.

He didn’t make the statistical leap as a sophomore that many expected, with some of his faults (turnovers, poor 3-point shooting) earning outsized attention on a team that had enough problems to go around.

Cadeau entered the transfer portal four days after North Carolina’s season ended, and committed to Michigan three days after the Wolverines’ season ended.

The fact that Cadeau is replacing Tre Donaldson in Michigan’s lineup, and that Donaldson is good at one of the things Cadeau struggles at (shooting), has led to yet another noisy offseason as May’s bet on playmaking over shooting has been hard to digest for pundits across the sport.

Strengths

Ball screen playmaking

Michigan, as a team, had 158 baskets derived from ball screens last season (shot by someone other than the handler). Individually, Elliot Cadeau created 124 for his North Carolina teammates while playing 27.8 minutes per game.

Cadeau excels as a passer and is one of the best ball-screen facilitators in the country. He finished 13th nationally with a 38.2% assist rate and created 12.2 points per game out of ball screen actions. Of those pick-and-rolls, he shot on just under a third of them.

Michigan’s point guard play has been all over the map over the last half-decade, and Cadeau feels like the most natural pass-first ball screen guard that the Wolverines have had to run the show since 2020-21. He also has as much upside as the Wolverines have had at the position in even longer.