Sammy Garcia is one basketball player who can see progress in a 98-10 loss.

``What do you mean? This was much better than the first game,'' he said Thursday.

Downtown College Prep High School, where grade-point averages mean more than scoring averages, lost its opener the day before, 110-6.

The San Jose school, which serves students who traditionally haven't been encouraged to attend college, takes a different approach to sports. It is a place where the girls get the prime practice time in the gym and all the players -- part of a largely Latino, senior-less student body of 300 --focus more on academics than basketball strategy.

The sting of the laughable losses is tempered by the fact that this is the boys' first season. San Jose's first charter school lacked a bona fide campus until this fall and didn't open its gym until late October.

``Half the kids haven't even played the game before,'' said Jose Arreola, athletic director at the school, which opened in 2000.

Jennifer Andaluz, the school's co-founder and executive director, doesn't worry that the routs will harm the psyches of her students.

``These kids have all lost before,'' she said.

The school, citing a 1999 report from the Santa Clara County Office of Education, notes that 48 percent of Latino students in San Jose fail to graduate from high school and that less than 10 percent of those who do graduate go on to four-year colleges.

Downtown College Prep aims to change that by requiring that students take classes necessary for admission to the University of California system. Students are expected to take two advanced-placement exams and must attend study sessions until 5 p.m. each day.

``This will never be the type of place where you come in and the first thing you see is a trophy case,'' Arreola said.

Game 2 on the long road to basketball respectability was much like the first. The Lobos' opponent, San Jose's Mount Pleasant, led 37-5 at the end of the first quarter and it went downhill from there. In the end, Mount Pleasant Coach Robert Lopez ordered his team to run out the clock rather than reach 100 points.

Hollister Coach David Kaplansky said after his team's victory Wednesday that the score could have been even more lopsided. Others wondered whether the losing team even belonged in the Overfelt Tip-Off Classic. The Lobos players were a head shorter than their opponents and took the court in mismatched blue shorts and yellow practice jerseys.

``It was an embarrassment to the Hollister coach, and I can sympathize with him,'' said Mount Pleasant Coach Robert Lopez. Before the game, Lopez worried about pressure to rein in his team.

``Your kids have to play fundamental basketball,'' he said. ``You can't tell them to play badly.''

Some in the gym hinted that Downtown College Prep should have started out with a freshman or junior varsity program.

``What program?'' quipped Lobos Coach Gonzalo del Real. ``We don't have a program. We have kids who like to play basketball.''