Here we are close to the point of no return in Kansas University’s men’s basketball season, and sometimes it looks like Bill Self is doing it with smoke and mirrors.

With the 14th game of the Jayhawks’ 27-game regular-season schedule coming up Wednesday night against Nebraska, it’s hard to believe — if you look at the numbers — KU is unbeaten.

By numbers, I mean the wide range of team statistics that compare the Jayhawks to their Big 12 Conference contemporaries.

Kansas ranks around the middle of the pack in most of those stats — fifth in scoring defense, sixth in scoring offense, seventh in turnover margin, seventh in rebounding margin, etc.

KU isn’t on top of a single category. The closest the Jayhawks come is in field-goal-percentage defense, where they are No. 2 behind Texas A&M. Then again, the Aggies, who have played one of the softest schedules this side of Bill Snyder, lead the nation in FG-percentage defense, while Kansas is No. 5.

What does this mean?

Defense may not be pretty, but defense does win basketball games — a truism that finally has sunk in among the veteran KU players who were so accustomed to the wide-open style of former coach Roy Williams.

All you need to know about the difference in coaching approaches were captured in a microcosm in these Saturday scores:

Kansas 76, Colorado 61.

Wake Forest 95, North Carolina 82.

Kansas won three games on the road during a seven-day stretch, and the Jayhawks did it by shrinking the circumference of their opponents’ baskets. Colorado on Saturday shot only 30 percent. Wednesday, Iowa State made 38 percent of its shots. And Jan. 9, Kentucky struggled to make 31 percent.

Granted Kentucky, Iowa State and Colorado are not among the best shooting teams in the country, but when a visiting team restricts a foe to less than 38 percent shooting in its own gym on three consecutive occasions it’s not coincidence and its not the law of averages.

It’s a team’s personality shining through.

Sure, it helps having four seniors — including three starters — and it doesn’t hurt having a deep bench, but those are just pieces of the big picture. Kansas is 13-0 because, while the Jayhawks don’t batter foes on the boards or shoot them out of the gym, they do cause them to launch bricks — 502 so far, if you’re counting.

Why are the Jayhawks playing such good defense? It isn’t because Self is blessed with great defenders. What he has is good defenders and, more important, he has lots of them.

Self has the option of throwing fresh bodies on the floor more often than he did last year and, while some of those bodies don’t enthrall you on the offensive end, they’re doggedly pursuing winded opponents on the other end.

Self has nine players who are averaging double-figures in minutes and two more logging about eight minutes a game. Last year, he had seven players who averaged at least 10 minutes on the floor, one who averaged about nine minutes and then a huge dropoff.

Before the season, Self stressed he wanted to cut back on the number of minutes the starters had to play. That hasn’t necessarily been the case with Wayne Simien (who averaged 32.7 minutes a game last year and is at 32.8 this year) or Keith Langford (31.7 last year; 30.5 this year).

However, Aaron Miles’ playing time has dropped about three minutes a game — 33.8 to 30.9 — and Miles is having his best all-around season. The 6-foot-1 senior leads the Jayhawks in steals and assists — no surprise there — but his shooting accuracy has skyrocketed. A career 40 percent shooter, Miles is hitting 47.4 percent of his shots, including an uncanny 58.3 percent from three-point range.

So far, Self has been masterful at plugging in spare parts. Who would have thought the Jayhawks could play four games without Wayne Simien and win them all? Moreover, Self hasn’t been loathe to use anyone.

Just when you think, for instance, that Moulaye Niang and Jeff Hawkins are so far down the bench Self has to call them on his cell phone, suddenly one or the other is in the game. Self has 14 players who have played crunch minutes at one time or another. He doesn’t have three or four guys whose only purpose is to boost the team’s grade point average.

Depth and defense are Self’s hallmarks. He possessed those ingredients on all of his other dangerous teams. Now he has both for the first time at Kansas.