Kansas guard Lagerald Vick (24) gets a hand on South Dakota forward Trey Burch-Manning (12) during the first half, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018 at Allen Fieldhouse.

In the process of improving to 10-0 on the season earlier this week with an 89-53 home victory over South Dakota, the No. 1-ranked Kansas basketball team held its opponent to 37.9 percent shooting from the floor and 23.1 percent success from 3-point range. The Jayhawks swiped a season-high 11 steals, too, and blocked five Coyotes shot attempts.

Pretty good defensive effort from KU, right?

Not in the eyes of Bill Self.

The 16th-year Kansas head coach thinks this team could become a strong defensive unit before this season is over. And what Self witnessed in KU’s latest victory, he viewed as a step in the wrong direction.

“You know what, I was really encouraged after the Villanova game,” Self said, when asked Thursday about the state of KU’s defense, “and not very happy at all after the South Dakota game. It wasn’t very good at all.”

It was the finer details of KU’s defense which disappointed Self, after the Jayhawks had their second-best game of the season in terms of both field goal percentage defense and 3-point percentage defense, on the way to holding the Coyotes to the lowest scoring output of their season.

“Just because somebody makes a shot, doesn’t mean you played bad defense. Just because somebody missed a shot doesn’t mean you played good defense,” Self explained. “It’s a good or bad shot when it leaves their hand. And there’s a lot of times where we didn’t scramble very good or whatnot. Without putting too much emphasis on that one game, I also know that we played a little hungover, too.”

The after effects that afflicted the Jayhawks’ efforts against South Dakota, Self figured, originated when they delivered a much more thorough and effective brand of defense three days earlier.

Villanova, objectively a far better opponent than South Dakota, seemed to inspire the Jayhawks to play closer to their ceiling defensively.

“Whether we want to admit it or not as coaches, I do think there’s something that when there’s anticipation to play a game of magnitude or national implications, you approach it a lot differently than you do sometimes another game, and I didn’t think our approach was close to the same for our South Dakota game as it was for the Villanova game,” Self said. “Against Villanova, I thought it was good — I thought it was really good. Against South Dakota I didn’t feel that at all.”

Much of Self’s dismay regarding KU’s defense sprung from how the individual defenders within the team’s four-guard lineup exerted themselves.

The Jayhawks, Self stressed, aren’t going to play full-court pressure defense, or anything close to that. What he wants to see on the defensive end of the floor is KU players making opponents “feel us,” both earlier in possessions and farther away from the basket than the spots on the court from which they want to run their actions.

Essentially: make offensive players uncomfortable.

“If you don’t start out in the right spots, you’re probably not going to end up in the right spots. Just the thought of, If you make the guy catch it at 22 (feet) rather than 20, that may not seem like a big deal,” Self said, before explaining why it actually is. “You’ve just taken away a 3-point shot and now you can play him as a driver or a passer as opposed to brining his shot fake into play. So those are the kind of things I’m talking about.”

Those are the subtleties Self appreciates, and he does think the Jayhawks are improving overall with how they live up to their coach’s expectations on that front.

What really irritated Self during KU’s most recent victory, though, were what he described as mental breakdowns on defense.

During timeouts against South Dakota, Self shared, KU’s coaches warned defenders to watch out for backdoor cuts, only to see the Coyotes execute the very actions the Jayhawks were just told to anticipate.

Junior forward Mitch Lightfoot owned up to being one of the players who irked KU’s head coach.

“Me, specifically, I was playing way too high on the floor and got backdoored twice, I think on the same play, when we were coming out of a timeout,” Lightfoot confessed. “There’s just certain things I need to understand are going to happen. Teams are going to try and run backdoors out of timeouts.”

The timing of Self’s lectures on the Jayhawks’ defensive imperfections coincide with the preparation for their first true road game of the season, Saturday at No. 18 Arizona State.

For all the players have experienced already in wins over ranked teams such as Michigan State, Tennessee and Villanova, playing the Sun Devils in Tempe, Ariz., will be a new challenge.

So Self wants KU (ranked No. 6 in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency according to KenPom.com) locked in as opposed to trending toward lackadaisical.

“It’s OK to, middle of a possession, to really get out and overplay and this and that, but if you know they’re going to try to back-cut you, maybe that’s a possession that maybe you kind of think about that before you overextend,” Self said. “I don’t think we’ve quite got that yet.”

Through 10 games, KU opponents are averaging 69.5 points per game, shooting 40.5 percent from the floor and hitting 33 percent of their 3-pointers.

No. 1 Kansas faces No. 18 ASU (8-2) at 8 p.m. Saturday (ESPN2).