HIGH SCHOOL ROUNDUP : Point Loma’s Shooting Woes Add Up to Victory for Serra

It was a game between two mediocre basketball teams, so it was fitting that mediocrity was all it took to win.

When it was over, Serra simply missed fewer layups than Point Loma and prevailed, 63-50.

“It was a game we should have won,” said Serra guard Justin Wible. “And after losing to Morse (63-54 in its Eastern League opener), it should get our confidence level back up.”

Serra improves to 8-5, 1-1 in the City Eastern League, and Point Loma falls to 9-8, 1-2.

But as far as that confidence level goes, well, confidence rarely soars when a team shoots air balls from two feet away and even misses slam dunks.

Both Coaches, Point Loma’s David Aros and Serra’s Tom Williams, hoped to put the result down as a learning experience.

“We’re just at that point in our season,” Aros said. “And every season has its own ebb and flow--at times we play real well and at times we don’t.”

Tuesday the Pointers didn’t.

And except for the second and final quarters, neither did Serra.

“That has been our problem,” Williams said. “We have not been consistent when we have to be. It seems we play our hearts out, then all of a sudden we feel like we can sit back and take it easy.”

Williams was talking specifically of the third quarter during which the Pointers whittled a 13-point deficit to only two by scoring 14 of the quarter’s final 16 points.

“We just weren’t running our offense good,” Serra’s Wible said. “We were out of sync, people weren’t playing as a team, they were trying to go one-on-one. That always seems to happen with our team.”

Except Point Loma wasn’t about to let Serra take blame for their problems. The Pointers insist they inflicted those problems.

“We set the tenor defensively,” Aros said. “We had five people out there working as hard as they could for a common goal. We were putting pressure on the ball, and if you can get pressure on the ball, you can stop good shooters.”

The “good shooter” Aros was most concerned about was Wible. He provided Serra with its 29-16 halftime margin by scoring 11 second quarter points.

But in that third period when--pick one: Serra dogged it, or Point Loma pressed the issue--Wible managed only one three-pointer, and that didn’t come until 20 seconds remained.

Wible, however, came back to score 11 more in the final quarter and finished with 27.