After Setting Scoring Mark, Bradshaw Has to Defend It

This one was for his family and all the boys back home who stopped believing in Kevin Bradshaw long ago. This one was for his daughter back in Florida, Jiana Cherall, and all his buddies in the Navy. This one was for God and his newlywed, Pamela, who have turned his life around.

This one was for Coach Gary Zarecky, who believed in him, and for a financially troubled university that let him continue playing. This one was for all the critics who have called Bradshaw a gunner. This one was for the world, which can’t ignore Kevin Bradshaw anymore.

Kevin Bradshaw wanted the world to notice, and Saturday night he got its attention. The 6-foot-6 senior guard surpassed the late Pete Maravich’s NCAA Division I single-game scoring record with 72 points in U.S. International University’s 186-140 loss to Loyola Marymount.

But instead of celebrating his place in history Sunday, he said he found himself playing defense against the media.

Many, he said, were noticing that he shot only 38% from the floor during the game, 19-for-23 from the free-throw line, 7-for-22 from three-point range, and suggesting that a no-name from an anonymous school has no business replacing a legend like Maravich in the NCAA record books.

On Feb. 7, 1970, Maravich scored 69 points in a 106-104 loss to Alabama. Bradshaw, 24, who served three years in the Navy before coming to USIU, entered Saturday’s game averaging 31.6 points a game. He had accounted for 38% of Gulls’ shots but shot only 40.4% from the field.

He’s playing for a 1-16 team and a program that will be eliminated at the end of the season--USIU athletics were felled as a budget-cutting measure after the school last month filed for Chapter 11 economic reorganization. These may be his last shots at being recognized by the NBA.

“Evidently, they’re not looking at what I’m trying to do,” Bradshaw said. “I don’t want to put anyone down on my team, there are certain things that you have to do to be noticed.

“People try to label me as a gunner. I was gunning last night, because if I didn’t, we would have gotten embarrassed a lot worse than we did. If I averaged 24 points, no one would know who Kevin Bradshaw was right now, especially at USIU. I have to do certain things to be noticed, and I’ve done them. And I’m proud of that.”

Bradshaw said he wasn’t aware of Maravich’s record until about eight minutes remained in the game and didn’t actually try to pass it until there were only three minutes left. A that point, he had 66 points, his team was urging him to shoot and the Lions were triple-teaming him.

“I felt it was a time that I could show everyone what I could do and I could open a lot of people’s eyes,” he said. “You can’t score 72 points just by throwing it up every time you touch it.”

No, it’s not that easy--and it never has been for Bradshaw, who averaged 30.2 points a game and set several scoring records at Buchholtz High in Gainesville, Fla. One of his teammates at Buchholtz was Vernon Maxwell of the Houston Rockets. Bradshaw was named a Converse All-American and was recruited by several big colleges, but he opted for a smaller school, Bethune-Cookman, where he averaged 19 points and was named All-Mid-East Athletic Conference his sophomore year.

But a year later he left school, married his girlfriend, who was pregnant, and joined the Navy to support the family. The day after he was married, he left for basic training in San Diego. His wife was supposed to join him three weeks later. She never arrived, and five months later the two were divorced.

Bradshaw didn’t touch a basketball for a year before some Navy friends coaxed him out for a pick-up game. Not long after, he was playing with David Robinson on the All-Navy team. That’s where Zarecky first noticed Bradshaw and convinced him come to USIU, where he finished second in the nation in scoring average (31.3) to Loyola-Marymount’s Bo Kimble in 1989-90.

His 72-point performance, in a contest in which the Lions set the team single-game scoring record, likely will make Bradshaw, now averaging 33.9 points, the nation’s leading scorer when the latest NCAA statistics are released Wednesday.

His record-tying and record-breaking points came on a pair of free throws with 1:27 left.

And before he stepped up to the line to sink the two most important foul shots of his life, Bradshaw looked up into the stands and found Pamela, whom he married two days before Christmas, crying.

“She knows how much (basketball) means to me and it means just as much to her,” Bradshaw said. “That is the greatest feeling I’ve had on a basketball court, having her there. I felt there was no way I could have missed.”