East’s Career High Propels Temple by Explorers for First Big 5 Win
Written by: Declan Landis
Photo by: Temple Athletics
Temple women’s basketball, led by sophomore guard Tiarra East’s career-high 25 points, defeated La Salle 70-56 at the Liacouras Center, moving to 4-5 on the year and earning their first win in the Big 5 this season.
Despite a dominating start for the Owls, going into halftime leading 33-21, La Salle fought back with a strong third quarter. Temple was up 44-33 with 4:34 left in the quarter, but the Explorers went on a 12-6 run to close out the quarter, swinging the momentum in their favor.
Temple, however, started the fourth quarter strong after giving up five straight points at the beginning of the quarter. They went on a 15-0 run that made the game 65-50 with just over five minutes to play and closed the game out from there.
“I know from previous games that we tend to shy away in the fourth quarter,” East said. “I made it an option for me to keep hustling all the way until the last buzzer.”
Temple head coach Diane Richardson said afterwards that her team was completely aware of how important this game was both in the season and in the Big 5.
“The pressure was on for us to get a win,” Richardson said. “They had a big win over Drexel–and I know Drexel–so when I saw that I said, ‘Oh my goodness,’ because I had a lot of battles with Drexel. We knew we had to be tuned in and focused to get the win.”
Temple scored 42 of its total points in the paint, often making the extra pass to find the open person under the net or attacking La Salle in the lane late in the shot clock. La Salle seemingly had no answers for the Temple attack, ultimately driving the Owls’ lead too high for the Explorers to catch up.
Defensively, the Owls held La Salle scoreless for long stretches throughout the game. La Salle made four shots through the entire first quarter and hit two shots from the field in the first five minutes of the second quarter. The Explorers finished shooting 19-61 from the field.
“We knew we could play defense and wanted to hold them,” Richardson said. “We wanted to hold them to a certain amount of points. And we did that.”
Despite the victory, though, the Owls struggled with defensive rebounding throughout the night. The Explorers grabbed 15 offensive rebounds. Rebounding has been a struggle for the Owls throughout the season, but the Explorers were only able to get five second-chance points, limiting the damage.
Despite being outrebounded on offense, the Owls grabbed eight more total rebounds than the Explorers, earning 46.
“When we rebound well, we win games,” Richardson said. “Some games we lost, we didn’t do that well, and we knew that coming in. That’s an Achilles heel for us, and today they stepped up and rebounded.”
Next, the Owls face their final Big 5 opponent of the season when they travel to the Palestra Sunday to take on Penn (3-5, 1-2 in the Big 5) at 12.
