Throwback Thursday: Kevin Bradshaw's Record Game for a Bankrupt School

Each week, VICE Sports takes a look back at an important event from this week in sports history for Throwback Thursday, or #TBT for all you cool kids. You can read previous installments here.

Each day Kevin Bradshaw reports to work as principal of King-Chavez Community High School in San Diego, he's reminded of the time he scored more points in a single game against a Division I team than any other player in men's college basketball history. He also can't help but think about how far he's come in the 25 years since.

Across the street from King-Chavez High is Gold Hall, formerly the home arena of U.S. International University, where Bradshaw played for two years. As a senior during the 1990-91 season, he led the nation in scoring with 37.6 points per game. No player since then has come within seven points of that average.

On January 5, 1991, a few weeks after his school filed for bankruptcy, Bradshaw scored 72 points in a 186-140 loss to Loyola Marymount. To this day, it remains a NCAA record.

This season, more than 40 percent of Division I college basketball teams are averaging fewer than 72 points per game. So, yes, Bradshaw was part of a different era—one he thinks was better, a time in which overly controlling coaches were less likely to restrict players from showing their offensive skills.

The most remarkable thing about Bradshaw isn't his half-forgotten basketball career; it's that he was even a position to score so many points in the first place, A quarter of a century later, he's advising children to avoid the mistakes he made, the ones that nearly ruined him.

A 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Gainesville, Florida, Bradshaw grew up playing alongside Vernon Maxwell, a 13-year NBA veteran and two-time champion with the Houston Rockets. When they were kids and best friends, Bradshaw was just as much a prospect as Maxwell. He averaged more than 30 points per game as a senior in high school and made first-team All-State.

Most people thought Bradshaw would remain in town and play for the University of Florida. Yet instead of signing with the Gators or another Southeastern Conference school, he chose Bethune-Cookman University, a struggling program two hours away in Daytona Beach. When Bradshaw enrolled, in the fall of 1983, the Wildcats had gone 5-21 the previous season.

"I just didn't like the tone of the way Florida had treated players before," Bradshaw said. "When they were recruiting me to Florida, I felt like a piece of meat. I didn't appreciate that. I was kind of militant and felt I should try and support one of the historically black universities at the time."

With Bradshaw aboard, Bethune-Cookman didn't improve much, winning just six and eight games in his two seasons. As a sophomore, he averaged a team-high 19 points per game. Only Bradshaw says he wasn't close to his top form. He drank too much alcohol. Took drugs. He also had poor grades, which eventually forced Bethune-Cookman to dismiss him.

"Luckily, they didn't pass me," Bradshaw said. "At the time, that was happening at all the major universities–players weren't taking real classes and they would just pass them…. Luckily, they kicked me out of school. If they had not kicked me out, I would've probably been dead or locked up or something. I was just headed down the wrong path."

Trying to get his life back in order, Bradshaw decided to marry his pregnant girlfriend and join the Navy. He planned on raising his family and serving for 20 years before retiring. After reporting to San Diego for training, he played on his ship's basketball team. He was later recruited to try out for an All-Navy team that traveled the country and faced semi-professional and college programs in exhibition games.

Bradshaw made the squad and played with future Hall of Famer David Robinson, who had recently graduated from the Naval Academy and been selected with the top pick in the 1987 NBA Draft. Robinson was required to spend two years in the Naval Reserves, so he kept in shape by competing on the team.

Although Bradshaw enjoyed the experience, he had no plans of playing in college again until Robinson encouraged him to give it another shot.

"He was the guy that kind of changed my life around," Bradshaw said. "The fact that he just took the time and said, 'You need to go to school,' I took that as a big compliment coming from a guy like that who had accomplished so much. He was what a student-athlete should be. Ever since I met him, that's what I try to model myself after, because it's not all about athletics. It's more about good academics and living right. That's what I love most about David."

San Diego State and Arizona State were among the schools that contacted Bradshaw, who had two years of eligibility remaining. By then, Bradshaw's marriage had dissolved, and he had regained his love of basketball. He decided on U.S. International because it was close to where he was stationed in San Diego and because coach Gary Zarecky had stressed academics as much as he did basketball.

During his first season with U.S. International in 1989-90, Bradshaw averaged 31.3 points per game in an offense he referred to as a "structured fast break." Zarecky implemented a full-court pressure defense and had a rule that players must shoot within seven seconds. He considered his philosophy as an attention-grabbing recruiting tool to attract kids to a program that was less than a decade old and that wasn't part of a conference.

"They don't put the worst defensive team in the headlines, but they put the best offensive team in the headlines," Zarecky said. "I used to tell my team, 'If you wake up in the morning in Rhode Island and you get your sports page and you open it up and you see that USIU lost 97-32, you have no reaction other than wow. But if you woke up with your newspaper and you saw a team lost 184-162, you'd read it.'"

On January 5, 1991, U.S. International traveled to Los Angeles to face Loyola Marymount. The previous season, the Lions, who had averaged an NCAA-record 122.4 points per game, defeated the Gulls 152-137, but they couldn't stop Bradshaw. He scored a school-record 54 points on 20-of-31 shooting and added 13 rebounds.

The rematch occurred at a difficult time for U.S. International. In mid-December, the school filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and cut all of its athletics programs except for men's basketball, which was allowed to finish the season. Still, Zarecky wasn't paid for six months, both assistant coaches were laid off, and the team struggled adjusting to its lame-duck status.

That night, though, Bradshaw left his mark in college sports history. At halftime, a reporter told Zarecky that Bradshaw already had 48 points and was on pace to break Pete Maravich's record of 69 points against a Division I opponent. Zarecky encouraged his star to keep shooting. Bradshaw finished with 72 points: 23-of-59 from the floor, 7-of-22 from beyond the arc, and 19-of-23 from the free throw line.

His old coach says Bradshaw could have scored even more.

"A lot of referees couldn't even keep up with the pace of the game," Zarecky said. "I would say 10 to 15 of his shots, he was either fouled or double- or triple-teamed. There were times when some of my other players weren't even guarded. But he did it."

And yet, Bradshaw couldn't do it all himself. Loyola Marymount set an NCAA record that still stands with 186 points and U.S. International lost by 44, an outcome that was all too common that season. The Gulls went 2-26, even as Bradshaw averaged more than 37 points per game.

Since then, only two players have averaged more than 30 points per game: Purdue's Glenn Robinson (30.3 in 1993-94) and Long Island's Charles Jones (30.1 in 1996-97).

"I think we've complicated the game," Bradshaw said. "I think it's more about the coaches now, not about the players. I don't see the freedom to do what we were doing back in my era. That's almost a lost art right now."

Despite his scoring exploits, Bradshaw didn't get selected in the 1991 NBA draft, which left him bitter. For the next year, he concentrated on his studies and didn't play any basketball. After graduating in 1992 with a physical education degree, Bradshaw received a call from an agent asking him to play in Israel.

Bradshaw thought he'd spend a few months there, make some money, and return home to work on his master's degree, Instead, he stayed in Israel for 16 years, playing for 12 years and coaching for four. Bradshaw married a woman from Israel in the mid-1990s and didn't come back to the U.S. until 2008.

During that visit, he accepted a job as an assistant coach at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Bradshaw, his wife ,and their 10-year-old son have lived in the area ever since. He spent two years at Point Loma before finishing his master's degree in secondary education and becoming a teacher and counselor at King-Chavez. He is now in his first year as the school's principal.

Soon after moving to San Diego, Bradshaw reached out to Greg Kappy, a former high school teammate who lived in Los Angeles and worked as a location scout and manager for movies and television shows. Kappy hadn't spoken with his old friend in 25 years and worried that he had died. He remembered Bradshaw as an angry, troubled child. When the two met, Kappy was amazed with Bradshaw's story

"Some people have it all together when they're young and some people it can take 20, 30, 40, 50 years or a whole lifetime to become what they're going to become," Kappy said. "It's astonishing that he's not only become a great guy, a great man, but he's actually a leader of young men. That's a total, total transformation."

Kappy was so impressed that he followed Bradshaw around for a documentary, "Shooting for Home," the first film Kappy produced and directed. Released in 2012, "Shooting for Home" details Bradshaw's journey and captures him returning to Gainesville for the first time in 20 years. His family had never met his wife and son, who is shown handing out gifts to his grandmother, aunt, and uncle and checking out his father's youth sports trophies.

In the film, Bradshaw also takes his son to Buchholz High School and shows him the gym where he once was a star. A board hanging on the wall celebrates the 1982-83 team that went 24-7 and won city, district, and regional championships. Bradshaw averaged 30.2 points per game that season, while Maxwell averaged 18.7.

"So that was a long time ago," his son says.

"A very long time ago," Bradshaw says, laughing.

Bradshaw doesn't hide anything about his past when he speaks with his family, kids at King-Chavez, or people in the community. He sees himself as someone they can emulate, someone who made plenty of bad choices but matured and turned things around.

"Right now, I'm living the best times of my life," Bradshaw said. "I'm very happy, and I feel very grateful things happened the way they happened."