He Goes on Defense Over His 72 Points : College basketball: U.S. International’s Bradshaw defends ‘gunning’ for record as simply the only way to earn recognition.

Kevin Bradshaw finally is getting the attention he believes he deserves.

Saturday night, 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 made only 38% of his shots during the game, was 19 for 23 from the free-throw line and seven for 22 from three-point range. The implication was that a no-name player from a no-name school has no business replacing a legend such as Maravich in the NCAA record books. Maravich scored 69 points for Louisiana State in a 106-104 loss to Alabama Feb. 7, 1970.

Bradshaw, 24, who served three years in the Navy before coming to USIU, entered Saturday’s game averaging 31.6 points. He had accounted for 38% of the Gulls’ shots but shot only 40.4% from the field.

He is playing for a 1-16 team and a program that will be eliminated at the end of the season. These might be his last chances to be 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.”

Bradshaw averaged 30.2 points 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 recruited by several big colleges, but he opted for a smaller school, Bethune-Cookman, where he averaged 19 points and was voted All-Mid-East Athletic Conference after his sophomore season.

But a year later he left school, married his girlfriend and joined the Navy to support his growing 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 Gull Coach Gary Zarecky first noticed Bradshaw and convinced him come to USIU, where he finished second in the nation in scoring average (31.3) behind Loyola-Marymount’s Bo Kimble in 1989-90.

His 72-point performance, during a game in which the Lions set the team single-game scoring record, probably 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 two free throws with 1:27 to play. Before he stepped up to the line, Bradshaw looked up into the stands and saw his wife 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.”