Dallas ? There seems to be a lot of talk among the Big 12 Conference coaches that the league is more balanced this season, that the traditional lower-tier teams are getting better.

“I thought it might be a year where it would be a little more balanced,” Texas A&M coach Melvin Watkins said Monday. “We’re better. We’ve been one of the teams in the bottom echelon. We’re better. If the bottom teams are better, it makes the conference better.”

Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson believes the large gap that existed between the top and bottom in the past two seasons has closed significantly.

“So many teams are much, much better, and I’m not sure the teams at the top are as dominant, so that closes the gap,” Sampson said.

But the standings after two weeks of conference play don’t show much change from the past, except maybe that glaring exception of Sampson’s suddenly struggling team after a 10-0 start.

The top teams still are there, and the bottom group virtually is the same.

While eight of the league’s teams already have at least 10 wins, and only beleaguered Baylor has a losing overall record, everybody is into Big 12 play now.

Defending league champion No. 12 Kansas University (11-2, 3-0 Big 12) is the league’s highest-ranked team. KU and Texas Tech lead the league with three conference victories. Nebraska (10-4, 0-3) is at the bottom of the standings, where it finished last season. NU and OU are the only team with three conference losses.

In between, the only real changes from the final standings of 2002-03 to now are Oklahoma (10-4, 0-3), which lost its fourth straight Monday night at No. 18 Texas Tech, and Iowa State (10-3, 2-1), last year’s ninth-place league finisher.

No. 16 Texas (11-2, 2-0), like Kansas in the NCAA Final Four last season, is the only other team still undefeated in conference play.

Watkins’ Aggies lost their first two Big 12 games, as did Kansas State and Baylor.

Oklahoma State, Colorado and Missouri, the preseason league favorite, were 2-1.

Some coaches say it’s too early — and, realistically, it is — to judge if the league will indeed be more balanced, or if there it will be status quo by the end. There are still seven weeks left in the regular season.

“I feel like it’s going to be muddled all year,” Missouri coach Quin Snyder said. “That preseason stuff, throw it out the window. It’s all speculation. What you’re seeing now, you see different teams coming on. There are a lot of different things going on to make this year a very fun race.”

Missouri had lost six of nine games, including Tuesday against defending national champion Syracuse, until its 79-75 overtime win Saturday at Oklahoma. That win was a needed boost for the Tigers, who have spent the season with the distraction of an NCAA investigation and allegations of illegal payments to players.

After losing its Big 12 opener 83-62 at Texas Tech, Oklahoma State bounced back last week with a pair of wins, routing the instate rival Sooners 77-56 and coming from behind in the second half to win at Kansas State. The Cowboys moved back into the Top 25 for the first time in seven weeks Monday at No. 24.

“The guys showed me they have character, the way we came back and played against the Sooners and the way we came back after maybe the worst 20 minutes in the first half against the Wildcats,” Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton said. “We are not as bad as we played at Texas Tech and not as good as we played against the Sooners. But we are getting better.”