Scotty would fill the Borg cube full of Tribbles and cases of Scotch. Let's see how those cybernetic beasties deal with that.
Well as we do this around here... It isn't that hard to rationalise - why were the El-Aurians running away? What from? Why wouldn't you at least ask? Well probably someone did -Voyager and Enterprise establish that the Borg made appearances long before they were "officially" introduced by Q, and that they were also fully aware of the Federation. For whatever reason the Feds or Starfleet kept their existence quiet, maybe Section 31 were involved, maybe Starfleet said "We just built 2000 Excelsior class ships now you are saying we need new ones"?
TNG itself more or less stated that the Borg had attacked Federation space before "Q Who?' when we were introduced to them for the first time.
Well they at that point joined the dots from the attacks mentioned in "The Neutral Zone" to the Borg from the scans of a destroyed local planet. Starfleet was therefore aware of an enemy that may or may not pose a threat at that point. Compared to some stuff in Trek it rationalises away pretty easily. There are presumably hundreds of non-aligned potentially hostile races that Starfleet deals with and not all pose an immediate threat.
dunno if this has been mentioned but Kirk vs The Borg in TOS era has already been done in Star Trek Manga 'Side Effects'
Captain Kirk would try to talk his way out of it. But he was always a sneaky guy, had something in reserve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-RmMvD6A-Y
Well, my signature probably answers this, but yeah, I do consider it. Very much. And I dig the idea that Kirk "pulled the switch" in the Borg Homeworld (or one of them, at least), at least the one Spock saw during his mindmeld with V'Ger in the first film. Thus, Kirk wins.