The Athletic has live coverage of Iowa vs. South Carolina in the women’s national championship game.
CLEVELAND — One Saturday night shortly after Iowa’s Final Four appearance last spring, Taylor McCabe was with some teammates in downtown Iowa City when she felt a tap on her back. A fan wanted a selfie. McCabe, a reserve guard who appeared in only 18 games last year and averages 8.7 minutes this season, was a bit surprised. But she said yes.
Then she realized why she had been asked.
“They thought that I was Caitlin,” she said.
McCabe is 5 foot 9, a few inches shorter than Caitlin Clark, the Hawkeyes’ transcendent 6-foot star. But McCabe and Clark are two of the few Iowa players with straight, long, dark brown hair. She recalled having it in a ponytail the night she was approached, much like her teammate some refer to as “Ponytail Pete.”
That wasn’t the only time McCabe was mistaken for Clark on Iowa’s campus. She said it happened twice last summer. Her friends on Iowa’s baseball and men’s basketball teams joke with her about her being Clark’s stand-in.
McCabe said she hasn’t been confused for Clark this season as her celebrity has exploded. “(Her) face is plastered on everything,” she said. The attention is only growing as Iowa plays in the Final Four…
