Texas A&M limps into its game against Kentucky. The Aggies are still a dangerous team.

A simple glance at records and season trajectories would suggest that there’s not much for the Kentucky Wildcats to worry about this weekend.

The reality is much different.

Yes, Texas A&M — a team that was ranked as high as No. 12 in the country just a few weeks ago — is off to an 0-2 start in the SEC. Yes, the Aggies — the squad picked to finish second in the league in 2024 after doing just that with a 15-3 conference mark last year — have already lost six games in a season that is barely two months old.

Meanwhile, Kentucky is 12-2 and has won six consecutive games. The Wildcats are ranked No. 6 in the country. They boast one of the nation’s best offenses, equipped with several scoring threats.

This game will be played in College Station, and the SEC road is never easy. But the Wildcats are hot, and the Aggies are decidedly not.

Still, this should be a contest.

A closer look at Texas A&M’s track record reveals a difficult road in the Aggies’ rearview mirror. Their defeats so far?

▪ A 96-89 loss to Florida Atlantic — a Final Four team last season — in a game in the Owls’ home state.

▪ A 59-47 loss at Virginia in the first edition of the ACC/SEC Challenge. The Cavaliers have won 20 straight games on their home court.

▪ An 81-75 loss to Memphis, the No. 13 team in the country.

▪ A 70-66 loss to Houston, which played the game in its home city and was the nation’s final unbeaten team until the Cougars lost Tuesday night at Iowa State (a team that A&M beat earlier this season).

▪ A 66-55 loss Tuesday night at Auburn, the nation’s No. 16 team, the biggest riser in this week’s AP Top 25 poll and undoubtedly one of the hottest teams in the country.

Four of those teams are ranked. Three of them are likely to be in the top 15 this time next week. And the only one that isn’t in the Top 25 is Virginia, which is still firmly in the NCAA Tournament conversation.

The outlier on Texas A&M’s list of losses is LSU, which shockingly handed the Aggies their worst defeat by any measure last weekend: a 68-53 decision in College Station.

“Our energy was low. Our communication level was poor,” Aggies coach Buzz Williams said after that one. “Our camaraderie, our competitive character — in many respects, I think, a lot of the things we have worked really hard for that to be the standard — was not apparent.”

Williams, understandably, wasn’t pleased immediately after, and watching the tape didn’t make him feel much better.

“I think anytime you get to conference, everybody knows who you are,” he said. “Everything is raised. The stakes are higher. There’s no secrets on your plays. They know our plays. We know their plays. They know our players. We know their players. And so it’s a much more pure — from a competitive standpoint — it’s good on good. It’s best on best.

“And we weren’t our best in the things we have to be good at.”

And these Aggies can be good at a lot of things.

First on that list is offensive rebounding. Even with a dud against LSU on the offensive glass, Texas A&M rates No. 1 in the country in that statistical category, an offensive rebounding rate of 44.6%. (Only five other schools in the nation are higher than 40%.) Senior forward Andersson Garcia is tops in the SEC and fourth nationally in offensive rebounding. Fellow senior Henry Coleman III is third in the league in overall rebounding.

This Kentucky team has obviously had more than its share of struggles on the boards, even with the recent returns of 7-footers Aaron Bradshaw and Ugonna Onyenso.

The Aggies turn the ball over at a relatively low rate, which obviously helps limit an opposing team’s ability to go wild in transition, which is where this Kentucky squad most likes to play.

Against LSU, the Aggies got fewer than 30% of their offensive rebounding chances. That was uncharacteristic. Williams said their physicality was “subpar” against the Tigers, another departure from the norm. They didn’t shoot the ball well either. Texas A&M was terrible there, as a matter of fact, and that’s been an issue all season long.

SEC preseason player of the year Wade Taylor IV is averaging 17.3 points per game, but — while the analytics sites still rank him among the league’s best — he’s not terribly efficient offensively, never shooting better than 40% in his three seasons in college and hitting just 25.4% of his 3-pointers (down from 35.6% last season).

The Aggies as a whole are shooting 40.1% from the field and 26.0% from 3-point range — both last in the SEC — and they’re getting just 26% of their points from long range, good enough for 285th nationally. Yet Texas A&M has an offense that rates 27th in efficiency, according to KenPom, and 35th in the country, per the Torvik ratings.

“We do need to shoot the ball better. That’s easy to point to,” Williams said this week. “But the way that we have (an efficient offense) is we don’t turn the ball over, and we shoot more balls than the opponent, mostly because of offensive rebounding.”

Keeping the Aggies off the glass Saturday will be of major importance for Kentucky.

And, according to Williams, A&M might be getting some of its swag back.

The head coach was unhappy with his team’s approach to the LSU game, and — even though Auburn beat the Aggies by 11 on Tuesday night — Williams was more upbeat after that loss.

They managed 19 offensive rebounds, bringing them in at a 44.4% rate. Getting back to that kind of production was key, and keeping things close — A&M led midway through the second half, and it was a one-possession game with two minutes to go — was an accomplishment in itself considering the level of competition and everything else that went wrong.

Texas A&M committed 19 turnovers against Auburn and shot poorly once again: 29.0% from the field and 15.8 percent (just 3-for-19) from 3-point range. But the Aggies were in it until the very end. And they took 11 more shots than Auburn, thanks largely to a plus-11 advantage in offensive rebounds. Williams was particularly happy with that stat.

On Saturday, they’ll return home for the first time since the LSU debacle, surely wanting to right the ship — and avoid an 0-3 start in league play — in front of a sellout crowd. KenPom projects a close one: UK 79, A&M 78.

“I thought we had the level of fight that’s required in this sort of environment, against this sort of team, and I feel a lot better,” Williams said after the loss at Auburn. “And I don’t think any of what is going to transpire is going to get any easier. But I do think that if we can stay to that (standard), we’ll find ways to improve. And I thought there were a lot of good things.”

Saturday

No. 6 Kentucky at Texas A&M

When: 2 p.m. EST

TV: ESPN

Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1

Records: Kentucky 12-2 (2-0 SEC), Texas A&M 9-6 (0-2)

Series: Kentucky leads 13-4

Last meeting: Kentucky won 76-67 on Jan. 21, 2023, in Lexington

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