(KBTX) – Texas A&M guard Wade Taylor IV will be unavailable for Wednesday’s game at No. 17 Oklahoma, according to the Southeastern Conference’s mandatory availability report from yesterday.

At the start of the second half of Saturday’s win over Texas, Taylor left the floor and went to the locker room, but returned to play five minutes later. He finished the game scoring 13 points.

It will be the first conference game Taylor will miss in his career. Earlier this season, Taylor missed the Aggies’ win over Houston Christian due to an injury he suffered against Purdue a week earlier. That was the first game he ever missed in his four years in Aggieland.

“I didn’t like it at all,” Williams said of Taylor’s absence early in the season. “Very unpleasant. We certainly rely heavily on his talent, but his leadership is as good as I’ve ever seen in my career, so even coaching without him was different.”

Taylor leads the Aggies with averages of 15.7 points, 3.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game. The senior ranks third in the SEC in assists per game, third in free throw percentage (90%), 15th in points per game and eighth in 3-point field goal percentage (33.7). %).

Transfer guard Zhuric Phelps (13.3 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 2.8 apg) and guard Manny Obaseki (7.4 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 1.2 apg) are poised to fill Taylor’s minutes at point guard .

The 10th-ranked Aggies (12-2, 1-0) and Sooners (13-1, 0-1) meet at the Lloyd Noble Center in Oklahoma on Wednesday at 8 p.m. There are no players listed on Oklahoma’s availability report.

In the SEC’s first year of mandatory injury reporting, Taylor is the first player listed as out. The conference adopted the reporting rules in September to combat issues related to sports gambling. For men’s and women’s basketball, a report is released the evening before a conference game and again approximately 90 minutes before the opening tip.

Over the past two seasons, Williams has rarely provided updates on his players’ injuries due to the same sports betting concerns.

“I think we all know why we’re doing this, and so my opinion doesn’t matter,” Williams said of the new rules before conference play began. “We’re going to do exactly what we’re supposed to do.”

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