City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Eli Beard was confident in his game. 

His teammates and coaches at Mary Hardin-Baylor, a Division III school in Belton (Tex.), were even more optimistic about his abilities. They knew that he could have an impact at a much higher level.

“They saw it before I did,” he said. “I got a coach, Zach [Adair] at UMH-B, he was an assistant last year; he told me, like, ‘you shouldn’t be here, dude,’ and I was like ‘no bro, I’m not better than anybody here.’ 

“A lot of people believed in me more than I believed that I could do it.”

Five games into his final year of collegiate hoops and his first and only as a Division I hooper, Beard is proving them right. The 5-foot-11 guard, finishing out his career at Drexel, has proven he’s not just good enough to be in a D-I rotation but to be a starter on a team with championship aspirations. 

He got the start and played 27 minutes on Tuesday night, contributing nine points and four assists without a turnover as Drexel picked up its first win this season over a D-I opponent, 75-43 over NJIT.

“It’s a dream come true, honestly,” he told CoBL afterwards. “I always knew I wanted to play here, and now it’s just a dream come true. I’m just trying to make the most of this opportunity.”

Beard was born in Southern California and spent his early years outside San Diego. Before he was a teen, he moved to be closer to family, settling in Big Sandy, Texas, a town of just over 1,200 located in Upshur County in the western part of the state, about two hours east of Dallas and 90 minutes west of Shreveport, La. 

By high school, he was in the western part of the state, standing out at Seminole (Tex.) High, helping them to a 22-7 win his senior year in 2020-21. But college attention was minimal; Beard said he had some Division III interest but chose to go the junior college route, hoping to improve his stock. 

He played one year at New Mexico Junior College, averaging 6.8 ppg, then one season at Bossier Parish (La.), averaging 7.8 ppg. Without any scholarship offers at that point, he elected to go to Mary Hardin-Baylor and play for head coach Clif Carroll, who had recruited Beard out of high school and kept in touch throughout his junior college years.

Beard put together two monster seasons at Mary Hardin-Baylor, which was founded in the 1850s as Baylor’s female college, but eventually split off to become its own university which now has nearly 4,000 undergraduates. As a senior, Beard averaged 22.3 ppg for the Crusaders, earning first team all-American Southwest Conference honors. He proved himself an electric scorer and shooter, topping off with a 44-point game late in the season while making 39.9% of his 3-point attempts. 

Thanks to an NCAA ruling that allowed those who’d played JUCO basketball an extra year of eligibility, he hit the transfer portal. He said there was a flurry of initial interest, but that soon died out. For a while, it seemed like his career was indeed over. 

Then, later in the spring — Beard thought it was sometime in May — Drexel assistant coach Will Chavis hit him up.

“I didn’t know if I was going to play again and Coach Chavis called me while I was in the gym playing with my friends,” he said, “and it was a go since then. I was just trying to get here.”

Beard had never been to Philadelphia, had never heard of Drexel. But the folks around him had; Carroll had actually been a graduate assistant at Texas Tech when Chavis played there under Bobby Knight from 2001-03; other friends and family filled Beard in on the fact that the Dragons had won one Coastal Athletic Association title under head coach Zach Spiker, in 2021, and had been in the upper half of the conference each of the last four seasons.

It didn’t take Beard long to get up to Philly and visit; he committed on the spot. Drexel officially announced Beard’s arrival in June, getting him on campus for the team’s summer workouts, an important time for a program that lost four transfers to high-major programs from last season. 

By the time the fall rolled around, it was clear he was going to be in the mix. Bouncy and energetic, with a strong outside shot, he was able to pair well with either junior guard Kevin Vanderhorst or sophomore Josh Reed to form a backcourt with two combo guards who could play on and off the ball.

“Right before the season, I started getting comfortable with the reads, the playcalling, with everything,” he said, “so that’s when I started knowing, okay, I’ve got a shot at playing.”

Beard got the start in his first Division I game, scoring six points with four assists against D-III Widener. He came off the bench for the next two, scoring seven points in the Big 5 loss to St. Joe’s on Nov. 8 before breaking out three days later with a 24-point, three-assist effort against Colgate, going 4-of-7 from downtown. That got him back into the starting lineup against Syracuse, where he played 32 minutes and scored 13 points against the Orange.

After the win over NJIT, which featured a staunch defensive effort from the Dragons (2-3) against one of the worst offensive teams in Division I hoops, Beard is second on the team in scoring (11.8 ppg), with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. He’s shooting 45.8% (22-of-48) from the field and 38.5% (10-of-26) from the 3-point arc, with 10 rebounds and four steals as well.

According to his teammates and coaches, his impact off the court has been just as important. 

“If you went to the locker room and said one of these guys has been here for four months, one of these guys been here for four years, I think you'd have a hard time identifying Eli as the guy that's just got here,” Spiker said. “He's a force multiplier. He makes everybody around him better, challenges people, says it in a way where they don't hate him. They know it's going the right spot. He's honest, and he takes hard coaching, and he holds himself accountable. So he's a joy to coach.”

“I appreciate him every day,” junior wing Shane Blakeney said. “Some days we’re a little down in energy, maybe coming off a weekend or a stretch of games and he makes sure we get going. It’s good to see him every day, because his energy is always high.”

A piano player and former snare drummer who loves R&B and who called Michael Jackson the “best artist to ever walk the planet,” Beard said he was enjoying being in the City of Brotherly Love, able to be in walking distance or a subway ride away from a whole city to explore; after the Drexel win over NJIT, he was off to Temple to see Gunna in concert at the Liacouras Center. 

After college, he’s got hopes of turning pro on the court, his year at Drexel perhaps enough to show teams around the globe that he can hang at even another level higher. He’ll get his undergraduate degree in the spring in exercise science; if the professional career doesn’t pan out, he said he’ll look into coaching or becoming a physical therapist. 

Before all that are the next three-and-a-half months of the college hoops season, which Drexel’s hoping lasts beyond the CAA Tournament in Washington, D.C. in March. And though he’s only been a Dragon for less than half a year, though he’s more than a thousand miles from home and in a place he never saw himself in until this spring, Beard’s all-in to make it happen.

“It was difficult at first, being so far away from home, not having nobody down here to really depend on,” he said. “But my teammates, love them to death, they did a good job, they make it a lot easier. These are my brothers. I love it here.”