“They said I couldn’t do it,” Final Four Most Outstanding Player Elliot Cadeau said on social media after winning the National Championship.
Who’s the “they?” His former team, the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Cadeau, with the help of his teammates, also used some more colorful language to describe North Carolina. He’s not the only former Tar Heel to bear ill-will towards his former program, nor the only one to blossom after leaving Chapel Hill. And while Cadeau now has a championship ring, his former coach
is out of a job.
The purpose of this accounting is not simply to allow Duke fans some schadenfreude after a heartbreaking end to the 2026 season (although it’s certainly a nice bonus). Instead, it’s intended as a cautionary tale before the onset of the annual “silly season” of roster building.
North Carolina certainly isn’t the only top-tier program to fall victim to pining after shiny new toys in the transfer portal. While there are already more than 1000 players in the transfer portal, more will surely join after their team seemingly “recruits over” them. One could even argue Michigan did this with Cadeau, leading last year’s point guard Tre Donaldson to leave for Miami.
But for every success story like the Wolverines, there’s unending “what if” questions for fan base at the opposite end of the equation. We may never know the true impetus for Cadeau’s departure from UNC—whether he left because he was unhappy or was “forced out” by the coaching staff—but its hard to argue now that this year’s Tar Heels wouldn’t have been scary good with this version of Elliot Cadeau as the head of the snake.
Duke fans would be wise to heed the warnings of this tale from a few miles down Tobacco Road. There will surely be names in the transfer portal connected to Duke that will seem, on paper, to improve the Blue Devils significantly. But just as every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, every transfer has its countermove.
Many Blue Devil fans want an “experienced point guard,” seeing that as a panacea for Duke’s (overblown) tendency to give up large leads. But would that be worth the risk of running of Cayden Boozer and seeing him have his own Cadeau-like ascension in another uniform?
Or, perhaps you want Duke to find a dominant scoring wing to have the ball in late game situations. That player will demand significant NIL dollars and playing time, which would undoubtedly affect the decisions of Isaiah Evans, Caleb Foster, Dame Sarr, and Nik Khamenia.
Perhaps Jon Scheyer will critically assess his roster and decide the potential reward of one of those (or any number of others) decisions is worth the risk. But North Carolina fans can attest to how it feels when those moves don’t work out as planned.
What makes college basketball great is that it is played by young men who are rapidly improving at their craft, and Cadeau is the case in point: in one season at Michigan, he made nearly twice as many three point shots as in two years at Carolina. If programs don’t correctly identify the players who merit patience and development, they may see them achieve glory in another team’s uniform.
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