All eyes will be on USA basketball during the Olympic Games in Paris but keep an eyeball peeled for South Sudan, and former Texas player Royal Ivey, its head coach.

Ivey, a hard-nosed guard on Rick Barnes’ Longhorn teams of the early 2000s, including the 2003 Final Four squad that lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Syracuse and star freshman Carmelo Anthony, will lead the country into the Group C bracket which includes the U.S., Puerto Rico and Serbia.

Ivey, a 10-year NBA veteran and current Houston Rockets assistant, led the Bright Stars to a 101-78 win over Angola in the at  2023 FIBA Africa Cup to secure the country’s first Olympic basketball bid. It’s the world’s youngest country at that, having gained its independence from Sudan in 2011.

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“It’s been a humbling journey,” Ivey told reporters after the win. “I had heartaches, I have a lot of ebbs and flows, and it’s a great feeling right now. A year ago we were practicing outside with eagles flying around while we were practicing and the courts were flooded. Like to go from there to come and play in front of these fans in the Philippines (Manila)… I’m on cloud nine right now.”

Ivey and Sudanese-born Luol Deng, the President of the South Sudan Basketball Federation who moved from the war-town country to Egypt at age three then to London seven years later, are old friends who played together at Blair Academy prep school in New Jersey.

Deng moved to the U.S. in 1999 and become fast friends with Ivey at Blair. They were so close that Ivey actually gave the new kid his first pair of sneakers and invited him to spend the holidays with his family.

Deng, a two-time all-star who played 16 seasons in the league and earned over $160 million, reportedly used much of his own money in 2019 to bankroll the country’s basketball federation. He hired Ivey to coach South Sudan two years later. It’s a non-paying gig but some things are bigger than money. A country with no indoor basketball courts is playing in the Olympics.

Ivey and Deng are not only bringing a spotlight to a place in the world that hasn’t always had it good but also changing the lives of young people in the process.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Golden: Texas ex Royal Ivey has Cinderella South Sudan in Olympics