Winning follows Beal

While growing up as a tough, talented – but undersized – product of the local AAU basketball scene, Eric Beal coveted a chance to test himself against the best in college.

But despite a splendid high school career at North Central, where he was named the Greater Spokane League’s most valuable player as a senior, he never got that opportunity.

And now, as his college career winds down at Whitworth University, Beal does his best to mask any disappointment he might feel, while trying to milk every ounce of satisfaction that comes from winning.

At any level.

“Coming out of high school, I wouldn’t have thought this is where I’d end up, or that this is the way my college career would have gone,” the Pirates’ first-year senior point guard admitted. “But I’ve been able to play all along on teams where you keep winning, and that’s really the experience you want.”

Beal has taken a roundabout route to Whitworth, having spent two seasons at Community Colleges of Spokane after attracting only modest interest from NCAA Division I schools following his senior year. He enrolled at CCS, he explained, on the advice of coaches at Eastern Washington University and Montana, who felt a year or two at the junior college level might better prepare him for the challenges of Big Sky Conference competition.

But even after leading the Sasquatch to a 30-2 record and an NWAACC regional championship as a sophomore, Beal was snubbed by both the Eagles and Grizzlies and ended up accepting a partial scholarship to perennial NAIA power Concordia University in Irvine, Calif.

His experience there – as a backup to the Eagles’ junior point guard and three-year starter Terrence Worthy – was as forgettable as it was short-lived. So Beal asked for his walking papers, which were issued, and ended up at Whitworth, an NCAA Division III school that had recruited him out of high school.

Pirates coach Jim Hayford remembers first hearing about Beal’s decision to transfer and flying immediately to Southern California to personally make sure everything was in order, academically, for the 5-foot-11, 185-pounder, to return to Spokane and remain on track to earn his degree.

“Once we knew (the transfer) was going to happen, we put everything we had into getting him here,” Hayford said.

Which makes sense, considering the Pirates were in desperate need of a point guard after losing Ross Nakamura, the nation’s D-III leader in assists-to- turnovers ratio, to graduation.

The obvious concern, Hayford said, was Beal would have only one year to learn the Pirates’ system. But considering he had played under four different coaches – one in high school, two at CCS and another at Concordia – in the previous four years, Hayford was willing to take the risk.

And the rewards have been remarkable.

The defending Northwest Conference champions (19-2 overall, 12-0 NWC) are ranked eighth by d3hoops.com and take a school-record 18-game win streak into this weekend’s final homestand of the regular season against Puget Sound tonight and Pacific Lutheran on Saturday.

Beal has been instrumental to the Bucs’ success while averaging 14.0 points, 6.2 assists and 4.2 rebounds. And he put together a masterful performance last Saturday by scoring 30 points and handing out nine assists in a 98-89 road win over George Fox that clinched at least a share of the NWC championship.

Beal’s ability to operate so effectively in an unfamiliar system has not surprised anyone involved with the program.

“I knew what we were getting with Eric,” Hayford said. “Eric just loves basketball. It’s part of his being. And even though our system requires that you make a lot of different reads, he learned it quickly – which says a lot about his ability to acclimate to me being his fifth coach in five years.”

Nate Montgomery, the Pirates’ senior center and leading scorer, admitted to being a bit uneasy in the wake of the graduation loss of Nakamura.

“I hadn’t heard, yet, that Eric was coming here,” he explained. “But once I did, I was pretty excited, because I had played against him when we scrimmaged CCS a few times, and he was like a man-child out there. He’s a little different kind of point guard; more of a risk-taker than Ross.

“He makes a few more turnovers, obviously, but he’s a big assist guy who tries to get all of his teammates involved, and he’s probably the toughest player I’ve every played with.”