After Duquesne’s 81-78 victory Saturday night against George Mason, coach Keith Dambrot might have walked off the court feeling like he just robbed a bank.

And maybe he walked a little faster, too, before someone realized the numbers didn’t add up and George Mason should have won. Let’s count the ways the Dukes could have lost:

• They allowed George Mason (15-14, 4-12) to grab 17 offensive rebounds, score 26 second-chance points and shoot 52.7% from the field.

• They missed six free throws in the final minute while never holding more than a two-possession lead.

• For the game, they shot 19 of 33 (57.6%) from the free-throw line.

• They allowed George Mason’s Jordan Miller to continually drive to his left and score a team-high 19 points. “If we let him go left (again), I’m going to jump off (a bridge),” Dambrot said. “He just beat us left consistently.”

But the Dukes did enough good, especially with a zone press that led to 20 George Mason turnovers, to record a historic victory at Robert Morris’ UPMC Events Center.

The Dukes (20-8, 10-6) won a 20th game for only the third time in 48 years. Also, Duquesne has won 10 Atlantic 10 games only four other times in school history.

More importantly, the Dukes moved into a fourth-place tie in the conference with St. Bonaventure, a loser Saturday to La Salle. Two games remain in the regular season, starting Tuesday at VCU.

Credit goes to Duquesne’s zone press the players convinced Dambrot would work better than the man-to-man version. It allowed Duquesne to build an early lead and kept the Patriots out of sync late in the game.

Point guard Sincere Carry led the Dukes with 23 points, 11 above his average, but he had mixed results at the free-throw line. He missed two with 52 seconds left but came back and made four in a row to help ensure the victory.

“In fairness to him, he played too many minutes (371⁄2),” Dambrot said. “You miss, usually, when you’re a little tired.”

No Duquesne player was more inspiring than Marcus Weathers, who had 16 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks while playing on an ankle that was sore at the outset and got worse as the night progressed.

“It’s still kind of sore,” he said after the game. “I kind of tweaked it a little bit. Adrenaline flowing.”

The work of Weathers and center Michael Hughes (12 points, two blocks) in the paint helped win the game, but Dambrot was fretting about how his team played on the other end. He prefers to see the Dukes allow fewer than 78 points.

“Until we play great defense on a consistent basis every single night,” he said, “we won’t win a championship.”

But he was proud of his players’ resilience when George Mason, playing without leading scorer Javon Greene (coach’s decision), recovered from a 58-50 deficit to take a 61-60 lead with 5 minutes, 23 seconds left in the game.

“The good teams find different ways to win,” he said. “Why did we win? Because we turned them over 20 times in the press. And then we scored inside when it mattered. Simple as that.”

But he will be the first to say it’s never simple.

“I love the fact that our guys are resilient and tough,” he said. “When we went down one, that typified how our guys are. Their backs went against the wall, and they fought again. I think they’re not scared of the moment. We’ve shown that.”

Dambrot is proud of the 20 victories, but he said he didn’t leave Akron three years ago to finish in the middle of the pack at Duquesne.

“Are we all the way there yet? I don’t think so,” he said, “but good enough to scare people and good enough to scare ourselves.”

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