Daily Pilot High School Athlete of the Week:

On many nights, Andrew Albers stayed in the Costa Mesa High gym until 11 at night. Everyone, except Albers and his father, Frank, was long gone.

The boys’ basketball game ended almost two hours earlier. Back then, during the 24 minutes of action, Albers’ shot wasn’t falling.

The team was falling deeper into a hole.

The moves in the post beat no one, so why would the junior stick around? Albers wanted to improve, to show that a talented 6-foot-7 1/2 , 265-pound left tackle in football can play center on a court.

“There was a lot of pressure on me,” said Albers, because he was one of two returning players. “It was a lot harder because I was one of the leaders. My freshman year, I was just in the background.

“It was definitely painful because we did not get the results.”

The losses mounted, 22, before the final game of the season. The Mustangs played host to rival Estancia last week.

The Eagles played for a chance to share the Orange Coast League title.

The Mustangs played for their last chance to win their first game in the New Year.

“It’s a rare opportunity, when you’re 2-22, to play for something at the end of the season that matters,” Costa Mesa Coach Bryan Rice said of the Battle for the Bell.

The Mustangs fell short of ringing the Bell trophy that evening. That was OK to Albers. He spent the last night at home celebrating with his teammates, and not alone working on his game.

Albers helped the Mustangs end a 10-game skid as Costa Mesa upset Estancia, 46-43, to earn its first league victory. Fifteen minutes when it ended, after countless of high-fives, Albers asked his father what his statistics were for the night.

Frank, an assistant coach, read them aloud, “10 points, 14 rebounds and six blocks.” Albers impact on the game was loud and clear.

The Eagles struggled in the paint whenever Albers was patrolling it and he sent them home without their first league crown in five seasons.

Albers said he turned in his best performance at the end. He didn’t intend to save it for this game.

Throughout the season, Albers put up some impressive numbers. Twenty points one night and 21 rebounds another night. He averaged 10.4 points, 11.2 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game.

The stats mattered very little to the biggest player on the floor. Missing was the winning.

During Albers’ sophomore season, he was part of a team that earned the league’s No. 2 CIF Southern Section Division IV-A playoff berth. The Mustangs turned things around in Rice’s inaugural season, going 10-16 and winning nine more games than in the 2007-08 campaign.

That season, Albers’ freshman year, Costa Mesa went 1-26, the worst overall record in the program’s history. This season, the Mustangs won three games.

“I kind of knew how it felt,” Albers said of the constant losing. “We weren’t that good [two seasons ago]. This season, we were really close to winning six or seven more games. We win some of those games and we might be playing in the playoffs right now.”

Six of the Mustangs’ losses were by six or fewer points. Four of those games came down the stretch in league play.

Costa Mesa fell to league champion Laguna Beach by four, and by the same amount against Calvary Chapel, which tied Estancia for second place. How the Mustangs competed toward the end gives Albers hope for next season.

“There’s going to be some setbacks, because I don’t know how we’re going to replace a guy like Brian Waldron,” Albers said of the senior guard. “Maybe we can turn it around, but you don’t really achieve anything unless you work for it.”

In the spring, Albers is taking up a new sport, volleyball. He believes the jumping will help his vertical game in basketball.

Don’t be surprised if you see Albers, who has UCLA and other Pacific 10 Conference football programs recruiting him, jumping around late at night in the gym.