The 1964 Olympic games held in Tokyo, Japan, were the first games to be held in Asia and saw the country showcase its post-war reconstruction, while featuring famous gold-medal winning performances by Joe Frazier in boxing and Bob Hayes on the track.
It was also the height of the U.S.-Soviet Union Basketball Rivalry which saw the teams square off in the gold medal game in three of four Olympiads between 1952 and 1964.
And in the middle of it all, leading the charge for American basketball was Southeastern's own Jerry Shipp.
He was the team's leading scorer in Olympic play and as the team's elder-statesman at 29 years old, he would help will them to nine-straight victories at the games, including a 73-59 win over the Soviet Union to earn the gold medal.
Quite an accomplishment for a small-town kid who never let the size of his town effect the size of his fight and determination.
Born in Shreveport, La., in 1935, Shipp would spend the first 16 years of his life at the Tipton Children's Home in Tipton, Okla., before Ed and Ozella Shipp adopted him and moved to Blue Okla., population 100.
Despite struggling early on academically and athletically, he would use those early doubts as fuel as he pushed harder to improve.
And improve he did, not only reaching Southeastern in 1955 to play basketball, but excelling on his way to becoming an all-time great at the school.
Shipp was one of the greatest basketball players in SE history, a three-time All-Conference player who twice led the conference in scoring.
He set the conference single game scoring record with 54 points against Phillips University in 1957 and would add another OIC mark hitting 19-of-19 at the free throw line against East Central in 1958.
Shipp remains third on Southeastern's all-time scoring list with 2,176 points.
After graduating, Shipp was selected in the 1959 NBA Draft by the New York Knicks, going in the ninth round as the 64
th overall pick in the same draft that saw Wilt Chamberlain go number one.
He would opt to skip the NBA in order to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union which would allow him to compete internationally as at the time, the Olympics, as well as the Pan American games and the FIBA World Championships only allowed true amateurs to participate.
He would spend the next five years with the Phillips 66ers in Bartlesville, Okla., playing in three-0straight national championships with the squad, twice winning the title.
He would earn three AAU All-America honors over those five seasons and ended his career second only to Bob Kurland in scoring for the 66ers.
While playing for the 66ers he would also represent the United States, going on to win two gold medals in under two years in international competition.
At the 1963 Pan American Games in São Paulo, Brazil, the U.S. swept the competition en route to a perfect 6–0 record as he averaged 15.0 points per game, the highest on the team.
In the 1963 FIBA World Championships, the U.S. cruised out of the preliminary round with a 3–0 record. They stumbled in the final round, however, going 3–3 (6–3 overall) and did not win a medal, finishing in fourth place. Shipp led the team in scoring at 15.7 points per game in nine games played.
At the 1964 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Shipp played alongside future Hall of Famers Bill Bradley and Larry Brown, as well as who's-who of basketball stars of the time in Walt Hazzard, Jeff Mullins and Joe Caldwell.
However, it was Shipp, who led the team in scoring, guiding Team USA to an unblemished 9–0 record while averaging 12.4 points per game—2.3 more per game than Bradley, who was second on the team in scoring.
In a 69–61 win over Yugoslavia during the Group Stage; Shipp scored a personal tournament-high 22 points and accounted for nearly one-third of the team's total offense.
In the championship game against the Soviet Union, who also entered the contest with an 8–0 record like the United States, he scored 10 points in the 73–59 win to earn the gold medal.
In roughly 13 years from moving to the tiny town of Blue to earning an Olympic Gold Medal at the age of 29, Shipp showed that through hard work and determination that anyone can rise up from anywhere and stand in the spotlight on the biggest stages.
"Yes you can!," he would say as he looked to inspire others to succeed despite their background.
Shipp passed along the advice to set the goals high, work hard and prepare, pay the price, believe in your coaches and teammates and success will follow.
