A PAIR of exciting emerging talents have been named to the NBL1 East All-Star Fives, which were announced earlier this week with the 2025 season coming to a close following the commencement of the postseason.

The East competition arguably contains the most young talent of any of the NBL1 divisions in Australia, as headlined by the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence, which is home to the next generation of aspiring youngsters, giving the young prospects development at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Although it is a team filled with exclusively youth, both sides have qualified for the postseason and advanced past the first week of finals, showing just how bright the future is for the next crop of Australian basketballers.

The CoE even had a representative in the competition’s All-Star Five, with Sitaya Fagan being named to the Women’s team following a dominant campaign with the team. She has far and away been the standout for the Centre of Excellence, and her impressive campaign has been crucial to the team making finals.

At just 17 years of age, Fagan is already one of the premier players in the East competition, and put together a campaign that was reminiscent of a player in their prime. She was a dominant force inside the paint, and managed to not only outperform her teammates, but also most of the star players in the competition.

Her shining patch of play came in May, when she was named Player of the Week for a dominant stretch, where Fagan averaged 31.5 points, 14 rebounds and 2.5 assists throughout the span of two games, fully announcing herself as one of the stars of the competition.

Although there is plenty of exciting young talent on the CoE roster, none are more impressive than Fagan, who has naturally drawn attention from NCAA teams who will be queueing in an orderly fashion for her services in the coming years.

On the 2025 season, Fagan is averaging 22.9 points, 10.7 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 2.1 steals and 1.8 blocks per game, all while shooting an efficient 45.9 per cent from the field in what was one of the memorable breakout campaigns.

The other talented youngster to make the All-Star Five came from the Men’s competition, with the 21-year-old soon to make the transition to the NBL having signed on as a Development Player with the Illawarra Hawks again.

He has been a consistently strong performer in the NBL1 for a few years now, following in the footsteps of brother William McDowell-White, who emerged as one of the premier point guards in the NBL over recent years, and the Hawks will be hopeful Kobe makes the same leap.

As a member of the Illawarra Hawks NBL1 team, McDowell-White averaged numbers of 17.8 points, 4.7 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 2.1 steals per game, shooting 45.3 per cent from the field and 81.4 per cent from the charity stripe.

He has been the Hawks’ most reliable performer and shown the same floor general traits that saw his brother become one of the best point guards in the country. If the 2025 season is anything to go by, he seems ready to take the next step in his career at the top level.

NBL1 East All-Star Fives

Men’s All-Star Five:

Jason Cadee (Bankstown Bruins)

Kobe McDowell-White (Illawarra Hawks)

Will Mayfield (Canberra Gunners)

Todd Blanchfield (Illawarra Hawks)

Glenn Morison (Canberra Gunners)

Women’s All-Star Five:

Caitlyn Jones (Albury-Wodonga Bandits)

Taylor Wurtz (Manly Warringah Sea Eagles)

Riley Lupfer (Albury-Wodonga Bandits)

Nicole Munger (Newcastle Falcons)

Sitaya Fagan (Centre of Excellence)