SAUL LOEB/Arizona Daily Wildcat Senior guard Jason Ranne

Senior Ranne prepares for final home game with redefined role

Jason Ranne may not hit double digits in scoring while wearing an Arizona uniform. He'll probably never know the feeling of hitting a game-winner, let alone spend enough time on the court during a game to get into any kind of groove.

But a player who averages less than a point per game and under four minutes each time out for the UA men's basketball team has never meant so much to a team's success.

"I'm not sure Jason isn't the smartest, or one of the smartest, basketball kids we've ever had in here," said UA associate head coach Jim Rosborough. "He's really an intelligent kid on the court. He understands the game. He understands the nuances of the game. He understands his role."

While understanding his role was never difficult for the 6-foot-4 senior guard, that role has been modified as he prepares for his last game in McKale Center. Now, he is an outspoken team leader.

Originally a walk-on, Ranne was awarded a scholarship for his work ethic before last season. Last week, he showed his newfound leadership by calling out the entire Wildcat team in an otherwise subdued UA locker room after Arizona's five-point home loss to Washington, a setback that allowed the Huskies to leapfrog the Wildcats in the Pacific 10 Conference standings.

"It's about making sacrifices, sacrifices for your team," Ranne said after the loss. "At this point, I'm not willing to say that these bunch of guys are willing to do that, including myself, including the scout team and everything."

The reserve guard's call to order may have worked, as the Wildcats recovered two days later to knock off Washington State 72-60 in McKale Center.

More importantly, however, Ranne said that for a team as talented as Arizona, it wouldn't take much to get on the kind of roll necessary to win six straight in the big dance. But he says time is still ticking.

"I've tried to impress that upon this year's group. It's really never too late," he said. "You need to turn it on come tournament time. I mean, if we're not playing well by the end of the Pac-10 Tournament, I can almost guarantee we're not going to play well in the NCAA Tournament. It's just that you have to gel before that and have some sort of momentum going in to do well."

While Ranne recently started taking on the role of a verbal leader, he hasn't abandoned what got him this far in the first place.

Ranne had his first taste of Arizona basketball as a sixth-grader coming to a Lute Olson basketball camp in Tucson. Little did he know that almost 10 years later, he would be one of the campus's most recognizable figures, and not just for his skills on the basketball court.

Born in Tucson but most recently from Tulsa, Okla., Ranne sits as vice president of the Student Athlete Advisory Board, a position that brings together his penchant for playing basketball and his success as a student.

Ranne said it wasn't always easy to balance his commitments in the classroom and on the hardwood, but after he became used to it, it all became second nature.

"My first semester freshman year, it was overwhelming. I had pretty bad grades my freshman year," he said. "I wasn't ready for the traveling, missing school and coming back and then trying to pick up when everyone else has been there, doing stuff on the road, working on the plane or in a hotel room.

"Sophomore year, I kind of got better at it. It's just, you kind of get in a groove where everything becomes repetitive," he added. "You're going to have classes, and you're going to have to go to them. You're not always going to be pressed for time, though, because the schedule is the same every year for basketball."

Ranne has even managed to add another time-consuming duty to his schoolwork and practice time ÷ he and UA gymnast Katie Johnson have been dating for close to two years.

"The best part about it is that she has the same schedule," Ranne said. "That's fabulous, because she understands what I have to do and I understand what she has to do.

"A: Katie's just an absolute sweetheart," he said, "but B: She understands the requirements that you have when you're part of a team."

Come Sunday, however, the past four years will come full circle for the political science major, who will end his home career against ASU.

Ranne notes that his parents, Richard and Alicia, will probably take it harder than he will. Jason said the first time he picked up a basketball was when he was just a toddler at one of his father's Sunday night church games.

"He'll probably be in tears more than I am on Sunday," Ranne said. "I don't know what it will be like after that, but he'll be missing something."

While he may be ready to hit Lute & Bobbi Olson Court one last time, ask him if he's ready for his UA career to end altogether, and that's another story.

"That's when it will really start to hit me, when I start to think about how this could be it," Ranne said. "Everything's just going to flash. Everything we've done in the last four years, it's gone so fast."