Keith Dambrot doesn’t like long stretches of inactivity during the basketball season, especially when he’s trying to help his team build momentum for the postseason.

Like it or not, Duquesne’s coach was either gifted or burdened with seven days between games after an 83-80 loss to St. Bonaventure on Feb. 8. But he didn’t want the time off to be all about basketball.

So, he called Dr. Carr.

Joe Carr is a sports psychologist who said he has worked with 4,522 teams at all levels, from junior high to the NBA, for 40 years. He initially met Dambrot when the coach was at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and he asked him to work with his star player, LeBron James. In the ensuing years at Akron and Duquesne, when Dambrot believed his players needed guidance, he turned to Carr.

Dambrot said he asks Carr to speak to his Duquesne players “as many times as I can.” He works in groups, or in one-on-one sessions.

Carr’s methods revolve around getting players to set goals in basketball terms, such as deflections, taking charges, blocking shots, rebounding, running the floor in five seconds and recording eight kills per game (a kill is defined as three consecutive defensive stops). Off the court, he demands two sacrifices per player.

“It’s been my experience on teams I won championships with,” Carr said, “if a guy holds to those sacrifices, it tends to make them better but also helps the team take another step.”

Former Akron player Jake Kretzer didn’t think it was a coincidence every time the Zips won a Mid-American Conference tournament championship, Carr was on the trip.

Told of Kretzer’s statement, Carr said, “I don’t keep track, but when I’m working with a team, it has a better chance of winning than losing.”

He doesn’t want his claim to sound like bragging, noting it’s more a matter of “taking luck out of it but keeping quantification in it.”

After a hard practice Monday, Dambrot said Tuesday was “nothing but Doc Carr.”

“Most of it is for me, not them,” he said. “He’s great at team building, and he’s also great at anxiety.

“Everybody has different issues from Maceo Austin to Marcus Weathers to Keith Dambrot,” the coach said, putting himself among his players. “We all have different things that we fight.

“We all have phobias. We all have things we have to deal with in order to be free-minded, clear, to play your very best.”

Carr, who played basketball at Sacramento State, also sits down with Dambrot, who admitted he has patience and enabling issues, plus one that can be difficult for a coach to handle.

“I’ve got fear-of-losing issues,” Dambrot said.

Dambrot was handed a tough job three years ago when he was named coach at Duquesne. He left a successful program at Akron, where he averaged more than 23 victories over 13 seasons and appeared in nine MAC Tournament championship games, for the challenge of rebuilding a Duquesne program that hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament in 43 years.

The results have been good, especially this season with Duquesne (17-6, 7-4 Atlantic 10) compiling its best record through 23 games since 1971-72. In 43 years in the A-10, Duquesne has won seven of its first 11 conference games only four times — twice under Dambrot the past two seasons.

But the Dukes have lost four of their past six games to fall into a tie for fifth place with VCU (before Saturday’s games). Starting with the game Sunday at Fordham, Dambrot is trying to avoid the late-season slumps of the past two seasons when the Dukes closed 1-8 and 3-5.

“What we’re trying to do is play our best basketball when it matters,” Dambrot said. “We really haven’t been able to do that the last two years.

“We’re just trying to chip away and chip away and chip away until we’re a championship contender.”

Dambrot can’t predict how the time off will affect his team, but he said the players “practiced better” this week.

He wasn’t pleased with his defense against St. Bonaventure, only the second team to reach the 80s against Duquesne this season.

“But in fairness to our guys, that was the third game in a seven-day deal,” he said. “I thought our effort was good. We just didn’t quite have it defensively. But we played pretty good offensively. Sometimes, I feel like I’m putting plugs in the boat that’s got a leak. We were really good defensively, couldn’t score. So, I fixed that.

“Now, we score (a total of 162 points in the past two games), and we kind of sprung a leak defensively and I had to fix that. And now I have to do both.”

Plus, he is constantly working to polish his program’s image to show off to recruits.

“The more you win, the more doors open,” he said. “But I’ve also felt pretty well received since I’ve been here. I think they know we’re not a slouch anymore.

“We can win,” he said, raising his hand to eye level.

“Now, can we win?” he asked, rhetorically, emphasizing the word win and raising his arm above his head.

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