Kentucky WBB preaching collective trust in post-Rhyne Howard era

Unless you’re the UCLA men’s basketball program from the John Wooden era, replacing an all-time great player is always going to present a challenging transition period. Kentucky women’s basketball is about to go undergo that process for the second time in school history.

The first time came in 1983, when future Hall of Famer Valerie Still graduated from Kentucky to pursue her successful professional basketball career. Still is the school’s all-time leading scorer (male or female) with more than 2,700 points. She helped lead the Lady Kats to multiple NCAA Tournament appearances and the program’s first-ever SEC Tournament championship in 1982. After her departure in ’83, Kentucky failed to reach the second round of the postseason in the following 15 seasons.

The second time is right now, with Kyra Elzy entering her third season as head coach. The only player who has come close to having a comparable resume to Still, Rhyne Howard, has completed her impressive four-year run in Lexington, capturing UK’s first SEC Tournament title this past spring since Still’s group did it 40 years ago. Howard finished with over 2,000 points in her career, earned multiple SEC Player of the Year and First-Team All-American honors, and was recently named the WNBA’s 2022 Rookie of the Year. She was arguably the greatest player to ever come through the program, neck-and-neck with Still for that distinction.

RHYNE HOWARD

A name you won't forget👀 pic.twitter.com/L3CeQOZh8y

— Atlanta Dream (@AtlantaDream) August 26, 2022

Kentucky didn’t fare too well in the many years following Still’s departure. Elzy is being tasked with making sure that doesn’t happen again.

“A Rhyne Howard is tough to replace, obviously, but like all programs that have a player of her caliber, you have to learn to move on,” Elzy said during last week’s Media Day. “I mean I wish we could have her forever, but she has bigger and better things to achieve.

“This year, it’s more about players making plays. We did have a Rhyne Howard, but collectively, we’re not asking Blair Green to be Rhyne Howard, or Jada Walker. Everybody being their best offensively, and it’s our job as a staff to make sure that we’re putting the players in position to score. We need a Big 3 to step up and it might be the same three every game, it might be a different three every game. I think we’ll be a work in progress offensively.”

Step one for Elzy in the wake of Howard’s departure was establishing a new team leader. That choice was an easy one, though. Elzy has anointed 5th-year senior guard Blair Green, who came to UK the same year as Howard and remains close friends with her, as the team’s new leader. A Harlan County native, it’s something Green takes pride in.

Step two — the much harder step — will be replacing Howard’s on-court production, which, as Elzy said, will be a work in progress at least on one end of the floor. Kentucky returns just five players from last season’s roster, but two of them (Jada Walker and Robyn Benton) are likely starters while Green will ideally fit right in after missing last season with an Achilles injury. Returnees Nyah Leveretter and Emma King will play impactful roles, too.

Otherwise, six rookies and four new transfers will need some time — and plenty of trust from each other — to acclimate. But that’s what the offseason is for.

“Rhyne is a pro, man. She’s in the WNBA now. She did what she did effortlessly,” Jada Walker said at Media Day. “We’re all young still, trying to get to that point. Just trusting each other and our capabilities and what we’re strong at. Who the shooters are on the floor, who the long, athletic people in the paint are, getting our posts more involved, things like that.”

Throughout Howard’s career at Kentucky, she was a safety net for her teammates and coaches — if nothing was working, you could always give the ball to Howard and say “go get a bucket”. Nine times out of 10, she would. You could even rely on her to make a game-changing defensive play at the right moments.

But now there is no net. Kentucky will have to produce points by committee with 10 new faces and a deep group of rookies. The program has no other choice in this post-Rhyne Howard era.