Iowa Freshman Prepares For First Career Start vs. USC

It's only fitting the Iowa Hawkeyes freshman California native gets to make her first collegiate start in her home state.

The Hawkeyes are still mourning after Taylor McCabe's season, and career ending injury, but second year head coach Jan Jensen knows the team still needs to move forward. Taylor Stremlow is a great candidate to get the starting nod as she's already done so a few times this season, but instead Addie Deal will be making her first career start.

Deal stands 6' and was born in Irvine, CA. The Hawkeyes guard is a back to back B1G Freshman of the Week and now everyone is about to find out just how good she truly is.

Addie Deal's First Career Start

Ready for the moment. @deal_addie x #Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/Kui1pbNp9a
— Iowa Women's Basketball (@IowaWBB) January 28, 2026

Even though she hasn't started a game all year, Deal is one of seven players to have appeared in all 20 games this season. She's averaging just 15.8 minutes per game, but that's a number that has gone up quite a bit these last few games.

Look no further than the Ohio State game when McCabe had to exit within the first minute. Deal stepped up big time with a career night against the No. 12 team in the nation. Sure, that game was at home, but if she can do that against the Buckeyes, one can only imagine what she'll do against the Trojans.

Deal is currently seventh on the team with her 6.6 points per game average. She's adding 1.3 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game while shooting 46.8% from the floor. One of the elements of her game that still needs some work is her deep ball as she's just 16-46 from three. That 34.8% is far from bad, but is still quite a ways behind Chit-Chat Wright (48.2%) and Taylor Stremlow (41.2%) who both have larger sample sizes.

Deal Is More Than Ready

Oh hey, LA 👋 pic.twitter.com/EPSFLewoW7
— Iowa Women's Basketball (@IowaWBB) January 29, 2026

For Deal, there's no better time to start than now. Iowa had a couple days off, though their cross-country trip to Los Angeles certainly didn't help things. Either way, she's coming off a 20 point performance against a Top 12 team and has no plans on slowing down anytime soon.

The freshman played 32 minutes in that game as it was clear Jensen knew she wanted Deal as involved as possible. Assuming she starts the rest of the season, that's a solid baseline to go off of as previously she had only been on the court for more than 25 minutes on one occasion.

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