Entering January’s first weekend, the Big 12 standings may appear a little out of the ordinary for members of the Kansas men’s basketball team.

No matter how the next two months play out, the Jayhawks are a long way from surpassing UCLA with a 14th consecutive conference championship, and three teams — Texas Tech, West Virginia and Oklahoma — all got out to a head starts in the race to knock Kansas from the throne by winning their first two games.

As one would expect, 15th-year KU coach Bill Self has some ideas about what his players must do to extend the program’s run of Big 12 dominance and set a new NCAA record.

“I think we need to quit talking about winning the league, even though that’s kind of expected around here. It’s obviously a fair question with having a chance to do something nobody’s ever done,” Self said. “We need to just talk about getting better each week. If you do that, the wins and losses take care of themselves. That’s what our focus is.”

Avenues to immediate results exist for No. 10 Kansas (11-3 overall, 1-1 Big 12), of course. For starters, Self wants to see his perimeter players consistently defend the ball.

“Keep your man in front of you,” the coach began, bemoaning the way his guards haven’t even followed scouting reports enough at times to make opponents drive with their weaker hand. “That would be something that would be not an easy fix, but something that we know we’ve got to improve on.”

Two days removed from KU getting out-rebounded for the third game in a row (minus-15 against Texas Tech), Self also referenced his Jayhawks’ need to put in the work necessary to make an impact on the glass.

“Everybody’s got a job to do when the ball is shot. That’s stressed every day. We’re not doing it,” Self said. “The offensive rebounders have to make an effort to get there. And certainly you have to make an effort to check your man every time the ball is shot. We have not done that very well. That would be something that we can certainly improve on.”

Believe it or not, just making sure his players remain confident has even become a key for Self and his assistants.

“You know, we haven’t been through a situation where people are saying, ‘What’s wrong with Kansas?’ We haven’t gone through that in 12 years, where people would say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re struggling,'” Self said.

Back-to-back December losses to Washington and Arizona State and KU’s Allen Fieldhouse setback in its Big 12 home opener against Texas Tech have highlighted the fact that, as Self put it, the Jayhawks are “not very good right now,” relative to being an elite team, as is the program’s standard.

“So there’s a lot of things we’ve got to improve on in that area. But the exciting thing is, if you don’t go through some crap — and this isn’t a lot of crap, but it’s enough crap; you don’t want to go through a lot of it. If you don’t go through something tough, how are you going to develop that toughness unless you go through it?” Self asked.

At this point of the season, with 16 Big 12 games left to play, Self isn’t about to label the situation as dire. The Jayhawks just with their record looked better.

“But the bottom line is, to get to where we want to go, some things have to be addressed and guys have to take ownership,” Self added. “We’ve got to do a better job coaching them to get them to the point where we want to be at the end.”

Setting aside the end goal of winning another Big 12 title, senior guard Devonte’ Graham said, likely is easier for him, because he has been through the 18-game grind before.

“You can’t focus on something that’s two months from now,” Graham said. “You’ve just got to focus on each day.”

On Wednesday, following the loss to Tech, the senior point guard said the Jayhawks tired to follow that credo.

“We took a little step in watching the film and guys realizing they’re not playing as hard as they think they are or the way we rebounded the ball we looked really bad, and stuff like that,” Graham said, adding he anticipated they would take another step forward at Thursday’s practice.

Sophomore guard Sam Cunliffe shared the primary message for players this week: “You can’t win the whole thing if you’re not winning every day.”

In between KU’s loss to No. 18 Texas Tech and tip-off at No. 16 TCU (13-1, 1-1), Cunliffe said players couldn’t waste time thinking “oh, we can’t win” the Big 12. Nor should a victory make them feel comfortable, he added.

The down time on days off can prove just as important as playing on national TV. For now at least, coaches and veterans will try to help everyone focus on the task or lesson of a moment rather than a big-picture, potentially overwhelming goal.

“It’s collective as a group,” Graham said. “Definitely the coaches point it out, but us just taking responsibility and manning up and saying I didn’t play as hard as I could’ve or I didn’t rebound as good as I should’ve and little things like that.”