How Tiarra East’s older brother sparked her love for the game — and helped her find her edge this season

After practice, when Temple’s players had dispersed and the coaches finished watching film, there was the echo of a ball bouncing throughout the Liacouras Center. Tiarra East and her brother, Sean East II, were running drills from back when they were younger to help Tiarra reconnect with her roots. East, a senior guard, was amid one of the worst scoring slumps of her college career, and her older brother, who plays for the South Bay Lakers, the G League team of the Los Angeles Lakers, was in town to help.

”He’s a pro, and she’s in her slump,” director of player personnel Shenita Landry said. “This is what got her here. He’s here now to have her back. She’s having her moment; she needs to get back to herself. Sometimes you need your siblings to be there for you, and this just looked like a moment where she needed him.”

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Tiarra and Sean were inseparable growing up, which shaped her game and their bond. They push each other to be better, and when Sean sees that Tiarra is struggling, he wants to help her feel comfortable again.

“It means a lot [to me],” Tiarra said. “He knows my game. He watches me all the time. He knows what I need to work on. Just getting in the gym with him really helps me stay focused and know what I need to do on the court to perform the way I do.”

Tiarra averaged 8.5 points over a four-game stretch from Jan. 25-Feb. 5 and shot just 24.1% from the field. Temple went just 1-3 in that stretch.

Tiarra didn’t start playing basketball until middle school, inspired by Sean after attending his practices and games.

“At first, I wasn’t really into basketball,” Tiarra said. “Then, in middle school and high school, we just worked on it and were competitive with each other. We were working out in the driveway, and we would just play with each other one-on-one.”

Since the moment Tiarra picked up a basketball, she’s sought contact and played with a “bully ball” mentality. She learned to drive her opponents to the basket from her brother, and it’s worked for most of her career.

“She was always just better than everybody,” Sean said. “It’s because she was always playing with me. In middle school and high school, she would just go out there without working out or doing anything and just be good. We’d always ask her if she wanted to take it seriously, and she didn’t really start to until her junior year in high school.”

“He knows my game. He watches me all the time. He knows what I need to work on.”

Women’s basketball has evolved from the “bully ball” era of the early 2000s to a more finesse-focused game. Tiarra’s ability to bring back this bully ball style has made it harder for teams to defend her.

It’s something that Tiarra has worked on with Landry, who played for former head coach Dawn Staley at Temple from 2005 to 2009. Landry played in the bully ball era and knows how to blend it with today’s finesse style.

“When I played at Temple, we played bully ball,” Landry said. “I played 13 years overseas, so I played throughout the bully ball era into the finesse era of basketball. I just give her the information of understanding where she can take advantage of her strength and take advantage of other people’s weaknesses.”

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But in conference play this season, that aggressive style wasn’t yielding the results it once was.

Tiarra has played at Temple all four years of her career and recently eclipsed the 1,000-point benchmark in the Owls’ win over Xavier on Dec. 21. However, Landry believes that Tiarra staying at Temple all four years is actually a part of the reason for her struggles in conference play.

“[Tiarra] is one of those players that didn’t hit the transfer portal,” Landry said. “Everybody in our conference knows her inside and out. They’ve come up with a plan for four years on how to guard her. She’s going to have it 10 times harder than when she’s in nonconference play.”

Tiarra not only models her game after her brother’s but even wears the same number as Sean. When she came to Temple, she wore No. 5 just like her brother but changed it to 55 entering last season when Sean had to change his number while at Missouri.

In the two games since working with Sean, Tiarra has averaged 14 points on 40.7% shooting.

Sean sat alone in the stands for both games, eagerly watching and hoping the work they put in together would pay off and Tiarra would break out of her slump. When Tiarra hit a Eurostep around a UAB defender in the Owls’ most recent win on Tuesday, Sean got out of his seat and ran up and down the row cheering.

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With Sean’s support and guidance, Tiarra is rediscovering her confidence — and it’s paying for the Owls on the court.

“He’s a calming force for her,” said head coach Diane Richardson. “Him spending time with her in the gym and her getting her shots up and understanding where she can be on the court, I think that helped her. She was more relaxed this week.”