A base station receiver assembly (400) for performing a signal search, which operates in a coherent code division multiple access (CDMA) wireless communication system conveying a mobile communication signal is disclosed. The assembly (400) includes a multipath signal searcher (200), a receiver (300), and an energy adjustment generator (490). The energy adjustment generator operates to combine an energy metric (241) from the multipath signal searcher (200) with a symbol match count (447) to yield a signal (448) for weighting inputs to a finger manager (260). The symbol match count (447) is based on a count, resulting from a comparison of a number of times an output from the multipath signal searcher (200) matched an output from the receiver (300). The symbol match count (447) is representative of a likelihood that a time offset selected by the finger manager (260) corresponds to a time offset of the mobile communication signal (107).