ALTHOUGH the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence (BA CoE) could not get the job done against the Sydney Comets in Round 8 of the 2025 NBL1 East Men’s season, captain Jacob Furphy was still a standout for the team of youngsters.

The CoE have been one of the better sides throughout the 2024/25 season, coming into the clash with a record of nine wins and one loss. However, the Comets had a serious injection of talent when NBL Champion William Hickey joined the team in recent weeks after starting the season across the Tasman, playing in the NZNBL.

It was a grind of a match, with the Comets just sneaking their noses in front with timely makes at the end of the second and third quarters, taking a four-point buffer into the final change. However, Sydney put the foot down in the final term, outscoring the CoE 22-17 to hold on for a nine-point win over the ladder-leaders.

Although it was a disappointing result for the CoE at Comets Stadium on Saturday night, Furphy did as much as he could to try and keep his side in the contest and did so for much of the match.

Sydney Comets (84) def. BA CoE (75)

Jacob Furphy – 22 points, two rebounds, two steals

Furphy and the CoE may not have got the win, but his shotmaking was certainly on display in the road matchup against the Comets, showing that despite a lot of his teammates struggling to get going offensively, he can still find the bottom of the net consistently.

It was a reasonably quite start to the match from Furphy, who had just the one made field goal in the opening frame. The skipper did do it in impressive fashion, nailing the first bucket of the contest with a nice stepback triple to get the CoE off to a flying start. It was an excellent showcase of his shooting ability, as well as Furphy’s solid handles too.

The second quarter saw Furphy become much more aggressive on the offensive end, although the shots were not quite falling initially. The 18-year-old did nail his second triple of the game, this time off a Che Brogan assist after the latter pulled down the defensive rebound and ran the floor well, giving the CoE a three-point lead in the process, although they ended up trailing at the main break.

It was a strong showing from Furphy in the third quarter, who began to take over for the CoE with his excellent scoring and change of mindset to instead attack the basket much more. It resulted in some easy scores inside the paint and helped him score nine points for the quarter, an impressive feat considering the CoE managed just 19 points as a team.

That trend continued into the final frame, single-handedly keeping the CoE in the contest with his shotmaking despite the Comets looking to break away. After nailing a pair of smooth stepback jumpers a few minutes prior, Furphy cut the deficit to just three points when he nailed both free throws with just over a minute to play. However, it was as close as his team got as Sydney ran away with the win.

In the end, he finished with 22 points on 8/14 shooting from the field and 4/7 shooting from behind the arc alongside two rebounds and two steals in a captain’s performance, doing whatever he could to drag his side to victory in a brave showing.