Central's hopes of making it to the semi-finals after losing to Eastern yesterday, hinged on SCR upsetting North. It looked like a distinct possibility but faded away very quickly. That put hosts Central, the defending champions, out of the championships.

It was a queer first half to the North-SCR clash. Both the teams were terrible on the defensive boards but North were better than SCR on the offensive with their pivot Mandeep Kaur draining 12 of her 25 points in the well-fought first half.

North had a great start to the second -- they scored 20 points to SCR's six (38-32 at half-time to 58-38). But SCR pulled back by playing with three short but speedy players and two pivots, helping themselves to a 11-2 run (51-60).

But the exit of Shatty M Scaria, who hadrestricted Mandeep to just six points in about 15 minutes, made her exit and down went SCR's fight with her.

In the semi-finals, Western meet Northern while in the second semi-final, East meet South.

Results

Men: North East 67 (Arun Shukla 25, Bhawar Singh 22) bt DCW 36 (Manjit Singh 12, Jasdeep Singh 10); Eastern 50 (Ali Ahmed 16, D Kumar 13) bt Rly Board 27 (Rajesh Tandon 19); QF: Western 66 (Ram Kumar 15, Ranjeet Singh 14, Surjeet 13) bt Eastern 51 (S Nayak 13).

Women: North 69 (Mandeep Kaur 25, Prabjot Gill 16) bt South-Central 62 (Yamuna Philip 12, UP Laiji 15, Anandi 13).