Kentucky coach Kyra Elzy relies on ‘toughness, resiliency’ to overcome roster overhaul

LEXINGTON, Ky. — It came screaming out of the abyss, a white-hot fireball of unstable elements that held together long enough to blaze across the sky and make everyone gaze up asking, “Where did that come from?!” just before the whole thing broke apart and scattered across the continent. If you blinked, you missed the show. Without so much photographic evidence, you might even wonder whether it really happened at all.

But yes, in fact, Kentucky did win the 2022 SEC women’s basketball tournament.

Before that, the Wildcats nearly imploded. Afterward, they mostly disbanded. Everyone left behind got rings, though, and now we’re about to find out whether third-year coach Kyra Elzy can assemble a less combustible contender. All she has to do is integrate 10 new players — six freshmen and four transfers — while replacing five of the top seven players from last season, including No. 1 pick and WNBA Rookie of the Year Rhyne Howard. That’s the hard part. But the chance for Elzy to finally, fully make this her own roster is the fun part.

“Now I have two years under my belt, we’ve hand-picked this crew while I was the head coach here, and it does feel a lot different,” says Elzy, 44, who won two national championships as a player at Tennessee under Pat Summitt and cut…