Emily Lytle scored 40 of her team’s 69 points, and Central Coast came back from 10 down to win.

Emily Lytle scored 40 of the Bandits’ 69 points and still lostCentral Coast trailed by 10 at three-quarter time and won the last 29-17Manly Warringah’s women won and their men lost, same venue, same day

Albury-Wodonga Bandits forward Emily Lytle scored 40 points, made all 11 of her free throws but watched her season end, one of four NBL1 East semi-finals across Saturday and Sunday that turned on a single player or a single quarter.

Forty of her team’s 69. Fifty-eight per cent of everything the Bandits scored, and the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence still won it 77-69 at the AIS.

The Centre of Excellence opened with a 29-8 quarter. Albury-Wodonga then won the second and third 46-26 and got within one at 55-54, and the national development program closed it out 22-15.

Lytle went 14-from-24 from the field and 11-from-11 at the line with eight rebounds. The rest of her team went 12-from-49.

Captain Unique Thompson had 16 points and 16 rebounds, nine of them offensive, on 7-from-25.

For the Centre of Excellence, nine players scored. Aspen Crase had 15 on 5-from-6, Olivia Olechnowicz 14 points and six assists, and captain Isabel Smith 14. Olechnowicz and Smith were both in the Sapphires side that won bronze at the FIBA Under-17 Women’s World Cup.

Jemyma Manyok blocked six shots. The Centre of Excellence blocked eight as a team. Attendance was 82.

Central Coast came from 10 down with a quarter to play.

The Crusaders trailed Manly Warringah 54-44 at the last change of the men’s semi-final on Sunday afternoon and won the quarter 29-17 to take it 73-71.

They shot 32.3 per cent for the game and won anyway, because they went 23-from-28 from the free-throw line while Manly went 13-from-18.

Dylan Tea scored 25 with nine from the line, Jamal Shoaib 15 on 4-from-6 from deep, and captain Luke Cassidy 11 points and seven assists. Garric Young had 10 rebounds and Matur Maker seven points, seven rebounds and three blocks.

Quinn Slazinski top-scored for Manly with 16 on 5-from-21. Captain Stefan Valkovic added 14 and six offensive rebounds, and Isaiah Lee 12 points with nine assists.

Manly out-rebounded them 50-45 and lost.

Two hours earlier on the same floor, Manly’s women had won.

The Sea Eagles beat the Newcastle Falcons 90-78, so the club took a win and a loss at Northern Beaches on the same afternoon.

Jayda Jansen scored 25 on 8-from-14, Zoey Miller 22 with nine assists, Alex Delaney 15 on 4-from-6 from three, and Bree Delaney 14. Manly made 12 three-pointers to Newcastle’s five.

Newcastle captain Nicole Munger had 24 points and six assists, and Mia Heide 22 points and 16 rebounds. W Draft pick Saffron Shiels did not dress.

Sutherland put up a hundred.

The Sharks beat the Maitland Mustangs 100-76 on Saturday night, leading 61-43 at half-time and never letting it close.

Tyler Robertson scored 24 with seven assists and went 7-from-7 at the line, Adrian Cabrera 20 on 8-from-10, captain Lochlan Hutchison 13 with six assists, and Jason Spurgin 12.

Luke Jamieson had the line of the round: six points, 16 rebounds, 10 of them offensive, and seven steals.

Sutherland shot 52.2 per cent and made 22 of their 25 free throws. William Cranston-Lown top-scored for Maitland with 17.

NBL1 EAST SEMI-FINALS

‍Women: BA Centre of Excellence 77 def. Albury-Wodonga Bandits 69 (Lytle 40; Crase 15)‍Women: Manly Warringah Sea Eagles 90 def. Newcastle Falcons 78 (Jansen 25; Munger 24)‍Men: Sutherland Sharks 100 def. Maitland Mustangs 76 (Robertson 24; Cranston-Lown 17)‍Men: Central Coast Crusaders 73 def. Manly Warringah Sea Eagles 71 (Tea 25; Slazinski 16)

All four NBL1 East preliminary finals, played on Saturday 8 August 2026. Winners advance to the Grand Final. In full: Norths Bears v Manly Warringah Sea Eagles and Bankstown Bruins v Centre of Excellence in the women’s, Norths Bears v Central Coast Crusaders and Illawarra Hawks v Sutherland Sharks in the men’s. The team listed first hosts. Norths Bears host a doubleheader at North Sydney Indoor Sports Centre, women at 5:00 PM followed by the men at 7:00 PM. Every venue is in New South Wales, which is on AEST in August because daylight saving does not begin until 4 October, so these are venue-clock times and no conversion applies. Rows are in tip-off order and the headers are deliberately not sortable: the order a reader wants is the order the games are played.