Inside the Xavier basketball practice facility, there’s a wall on the far end that says Musketeers, with the following words underneath: dominate, invest, character, defend, work, persevere.
Maybe it was intentional for the video to be framed this way. Maybe not.
But when Kejia Ran popped on to the screen for her interview with The IX Sports, those words were right above her head.
The 19-year-old from Dazhour in the Sichuan province of China appeared alone on her screen. Off to the side was a translator, and while Ran would look off-screen and mute occasionally, she wanted to do the interview herself.
Dominate, invest, character, defend, work, persevere. It’s more than words on a wall. It’s more than a “live, laugh, love” of sports. It, in many ways, defines who Ran — also known as KJ — is, and how she got to this point.
Ran was a player who Xavier recruited heavily over the last year, and from watching her tape and international play, it’s easy to understand why.
Take, for instance, her performance in the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup, where she averaged 19.1 points and 11.3 rebounds per game.
“We started recruiting KJ over a year ago, and we just loved her play on the national level,” Xavier head coach Billi Chambers told The IX Sports. “She was that go-to player for her Chinese national team. They put the ball in her hands, and she could score at all three levels.”
Looking up and down Xavier’s roster, it’s apparent that Chambers and her staff are invested in the international game and finding players who can come over and make an impact for the Musketeers both on and off the court. Chambers had hoped that Ran would be able to come over last year midway through the year to help in a similar fashion to what Alicia Tournebize did with South Carolina last year, but that plan didn’t materialize.
“In watching her game, we felt like she could adjust very quickly to what we needed her to do to be a pivotal player for us,” Chambers said. “Her ability to score, being a great passer, a tremendous defender, and she had such a high level of responsibility already that she should be able to translate.
“… We’re thinking this is going to be great. It’s going to be transformational for that season. We’re really going to hit our stride and take off. Her family was not super comfortable yet at that moment of saying, ‘OK, let’s go full all into this.’ They were kind of still in that exploring mode. They decided that they were going to wait until after this year completely and kind of see what happens.”
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But then, a moment happened that shifted the landscape for Xavier and Ran as the 19-year-old was training and refining her skills in preparation for a major move to the United States to play collegiate ball.
Her life changed on April 13, 2026, when she was selected by the Atlanta Dream in the third round of the WNBA Draft — becoming the first Chinese guard to ever be selected in the draft.
“I was training in China when I found out. It was a really big moment for me,” Ran told The IX Sports in a virtual interview. “A lot of people congratulated me, and I talked to my family, and everyone was really happy for me. It really feels like a dream come true.”
Ran was on the radar of the Dream ahead of the draft, as she was one of five international players who the Dream had on a shortlist for their third-round pick.
After conversations with their head scout, Mike Petersen, the team’s former head coach in 2021, and current head coach Karl Smesko, general manager Dan Padover knew that Ran was the player he wanted.
“I felt like if she was there in the third, she’d be our go-to, and luckily she was there,” Padover told The IX Sports.
After Ran was drafted, she spoke to Padover to see what his long-term vision was for her and to share hers with him, too.
“He congratulated me after I was drafted, but I told them that I want to explore the NCAA first,” she said. “They supported my decision, and they told me they would keep following my games and watch my development.”
While excited for Ran, Chambers also had a little bit of panic set in after the draft.
“We’re sitting watching the draft. All of a sudden, we see her picture pop up, and the group chat between our staff starts going like, ‘What is going on?’” Chambers said. “We started messaging with the guys because we think, obviously, we still have an opportunity to recruit her. And then it just kind of started all over again from there.”
After Ran was drafted, the spotlight on her grew. While Xavier was the key school that was recruiting her, she also took visits to USC and Louisville, which ramped up their recruiting efforts after she was drafted.
In the end, though, Ran decided to go with Xavier and Chambers.
“Obviously, her exposure happens. More schools see her. They want to jump in. Obviously, they want to explore those options,” Chambers said. “And really, our conversation with her was: you’re going to have an opportunity to come here with your skill set as it is to compete right away, to have that game experience, to truly develop and get used to the American style game before you take that next step to the WNBA.”
“We had already built a really strong relationship,” Ran added. “All of the coaches were very keen to me. They followed my games and showed that they really believed in me. I also took an official visit to Xavier. They showed me around the campus and the basketball facilities, and I really like everything here.”
As Chambers emphasized, the ability to play right away was important to Ran. She feels like playing at Xavier will help her game continue to improve. She also appreciates the value the coaching staff places on schoolwork and life away from basketball.
On film, Ran stands out on both ends of the ball. Defensively, she’s a big guard who can switch, defend at the point of attack, fight through screens, and interrupt the passing lanes with her reach.
Offensively, she’s a polished facilitator who is a true three-level scorer, takes sharp angles to get downhill at the rim, and knocks down open threes — something that the Dream want and need in their system under Smesko.
If there’s an area to improve, though, it’s her shooting mechanics. Her shot is clean, but it takes her longer to get to it than it should at this level and definitely the next level.
That stands out to Chambers.
“Are you watching our practices?” Chambers joked. “… We call it in our program ‘quick and stick’ when it comes to your shot. You want to shoot it quick, and you want to hold your follow-through. Any other movement is going to take away from your consistency of putting the ball in the basket, and the common thing that we’re saying to her is quick, quick, quicker, and working on drills to try to train her mind to get her shot off quicker.
“Using our practice squad to really have those athletic guys coming at her with a long closeout, so she’s getting reps of getting it off quicker, while maintaining that consistency of her shot,” she continued. It’s a different game here, right? It’s physical. It’s a different pace, and she’s trying to adjust to that.”
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How Ran, and Xavier, are adjusting
When players come over from other countries to play in the U.S., there’s an adjustment period. Isobel Borlase of the Atlanta Dream said that when she came over from Australia, she had to give herself grace and time to adjust.
“There’s been lots of ‘news’ for me, and I think with anything, it takes time, and you’ve gotta be kind to yourself in the process,” Borlase said to The IX Sports. “You can’t just expect yourself to come in and be like I was back in the WNBL. My role is different; it’s a new environment, all of that sort of thing. I feel like I’ve progressed nicely over the past couple games, but every game’s a new game, and hopefully I can just keep contributing to the team.”
Borlase’s teammate, Sika Koné, echoed that sentiment when giving advice to players like Ran on coming over to play in the U.S.
“From here to with your national team, it’s totally different,” Koné, who is from Mali, said. “Just try to stay ready and focus on what you can do for the team.”
One thing that Ran can do for Xavier and the Dream at the next level is facilitate, but as a combo-guard, Chambers said that Ran can revert to being a facilitator too much in practice so far.
“We’ve had that conversation,” Chambers said. “I told her that we want you to be more aggressive, and she talked about it the other day. She’s like, ‘In China, my role was to score it, and then I would find my teammates,’ and she says, ‘Here, I’m trying to find my teammates.’ And I said, ‘That’s great, but you also need to find you.’”
Ran isn’t lacking confidence. She’s been studying her English, and she has been doing interviews and conversations in English to get better at it. Basketball is a universal language at the end of the day, and there’s no better example to prove that than what Xavier is doing right now.
The transfer portal and NIL are what rule the conversation around collegiate sports in this era, making it harder for lower-profile schools like Xavier to compete with the power-conference programs
What they are doing is finding any advantage that they can. For Chambers, that’s the international game. Entering the 2026-27 season, the Musketeers have nine players who are not from the United States.
“We felt like recruiting internationally would really help us. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily by design that we have mostly international players on the team,” Chambers explained. “I think it just kind of flushes itself out when you’re trying to put the pieces together, but it just makes for a beautiful style of play.
“They train differently, they grow up differently in the game, they learn a lot of responsibility differently,” she continued. “I mean, most of these young women are leaving home at 12, 13 years old and having to learn to think for themselves a little bit differently in life.”
One of the moments that stood out for Chambers came during an offseason workout. Ran was working at a practice to pick up the schemes and where she was supposed to be when two teammates came to help her out.
“KJ was having a little bit of difficulty with our rotations and where she was supposed to go to pick up the rotation if she was the last on the weak side. And a kid from Portugal and a kid from France pull her over,” Chambers said, referencing Denise Neves and Lucille Jerome. “They grabbed a board after practice, and they’re showing her, and they’re talking through it, and then they finally come with the common word, and they’re like, ‘Yes!’ and they celebrate her.
“And I’m like, those two kids, English is not even their first language, and they taught another player what she was supposed to be doing, and it just warms your heart.”
Ran is older than those 12- or 13-year-olds, of course. But still, she’s 19, and moving across the world from her family, who she says mean so much to her.
“My family supports me the most,” she said. “My mom and my grandma, when I was in China, they came to every game to watch my games.”
She said that her mom plans to make a trip to the United States to come watch her play eventually, but until that happens, she just wants to focus on what she can control: her play on the court.
“The biggest thing is getting more comfortable with the game. Basketball here is faster and more physical, so I want to keep getting stronger and adjust to that style,” Ran said. “I also want to improve my all-over game and become more of a combo guard. Being able to handle the ball, make plays for my teammates, score when I need to from both guard positions. My goal is just to keep improving and be ready for higher-level basketball in the future.”
Preparing for the future
That higher level is spoken for already by the Dream, who have the draft rights to Ran whenever she is done in college. They’ll be keeping an eye on her and her development, and while the team is about to embark on what it hopes is a WNBA Finals run in the playoffs, they’ll be watching Ran and Xavier closely this college season.
“We’ll have those conversations this offseason with them once we wrap up here,” Padover said of connecting with Chambers. “What we really discussed with her and her team about just getting as many reps of high-quality basketball as possible in the States is going to be really good for [Ran].”
Smesko watched Ran a lot, and he was a main advocate for her in the Dream’s recruitment meetings. While he, too, is locked in on the playoffs right now, he had some advice for Ran as she enters her freshman season.
“I’m sure I’ll be in touch with them and see how things are going. A big part is just the style of play here,” he told The IX Sports. “I think what she brings to a team with her attacking, being able to score, distributing the ball, but especially she helps you dominate possessions. She’s an extraordinarily good rebounder for her position, and so I’d tell her to take her time and develop.”
Smesko has had hands-on experience seeing international players play at the highest stage in college at Florida Gulf Coast University, as well as in the WNBA with Koné, Borlase, and Madina Okot.
“She’s very young, and she has a lot of potential. Sometimes, when the international players come here, the first year is always the toughest adjustment, so just enjoy, learn, and make some progress,” Smesko said. “I just think sometimes there’s just a lot of you’re having to adjust to a lot of things at once, not just the basketball. It makes it a little harder. So I’m not going to give any extra advice other than come over, learn what you can, keep getting better, and we’re looking forward to talking to her.”
Ran said that she’s been keeping a closer eye on the Dream since they’ve drafted her, and she’s following along with their season as they prepare for the playoffs. But her main focus she has right now is how she can help Xavier basketball, adding that she doesn’t feel any additional pressure after being drafted already.
“I don’t really feel pressure from it. I just want to play good basketball and keep getting better every day,” Ran said. “For me, the most important thing is becoming the best player I can be, and I want to represent China and play for my country on the international stage. I try not to think too much about what will happen several years from now. I just want to focus on basketball and keep improving.
“Playing in the WNBA has always been my dream. Being drafted made that dream feel a little more real, but right now my main focus is on the NCAA and Xavier. I want to enjoy this experience, keep improving, keep developing my game, and become a better player. When the time comes in the future, hopefully I will be ready for the WNBA.”
So, those words on the wall: dominate, invest, character, defend, work, persevere. Ran will need all of them to get to the WNBA, but if her journey thus far is any indication, she’ll show the Dream that she has all of those, and maybe an additional one, when she’s ready to arrive. That addition? Accomplish.
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