Forty years ago, for 11 consecutive weeks, the nation's leading men's basketball scorer was from USF.
Forty years later, Charlie Bradley, who sits along the baseline for nearly every Bulls game, remembers that accomplishment with a soft smile and a humble shrug.
"There were moments when you felt like you were on top of the world, where you felt you could score against any kind of defense,'' said Bradley, 59, who will be recognized and honored during Saturday night's Tulane-USF game at the Yuengling Center with the presentation of his retired No. 30 jersey. "In a way, it seemed like it came pretty easy. But, man, I would've given it all up if we just could've gotten to the NCAA Tournament.
"The media blew up my scoring and a lot of other people came at me, wanting a piece of me. But I'm just a quiet guy. I'm not into the accolades. I'm a team player and not somebody who wants to talk about my individual statistics.''
For a long stretch of the 1982-83 season — when the NCAA featured players such as future NBA legends Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson — that was unavoidable. The national buzz also included Charlie Bradley, a silky-smooth USF sophomore.
"It was an amazing achievement and I'm not sure the new generation of people at USF can grasp it or even know that it really happened,'' said former Bulls player Tony Grier, the leading scorer in 1981-82, when Bradley was a freshman. "We knew Charlie was talented. But he took USF by storm. He took the nation by storm.''
Bradley, a 6-foot-6, 185-pounder with Steph Curry range and a George Gervin body, was a major attraction. He averaged a program-record 28.2 points per game with six consecutive 30-point games (15 total games of 30 points or greater during that season) and a 42-point blitz against Florida State. Before a sold-out Sun Dome crowd, Bradley's sideline jumper, while falling out of bounds, tied the Florida Gators and forced overtime.
Suddenly, USF men's basketball was the hottest game in town.
"I remember being outside when my dad yelled, 'What are you doing? Why are you shooting left-handed?' '' said Berkeley Prep coach Renaldo Garcia, the former Tampa Catholic star and starting guard on Florida's first SEC championship team. "I said, 'Dad, I want to be just like Charlie. He's a lefty.' That's how we thought of Charlie Bradley back then. He was the greatest player we had ever seen.''
Tampa Bay Buccaneers players such as Doug Williams and Lee Roy Selmon were regularly spotted at the Sun Dome. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, a Tampa resident and USF booster, was a huge fan. ABC-TV sportscaster Howard Cosell accompanied Steinbrenner to USF's National Invitation Tournament game in 1983 and raved about Bradley's dominance. "He can shoot with anybody I've ever seen,'' said Cosell, known best for his "Monday Night Football'' fame.
In 2010, when the Tampa Tribune compiled an all-time list of "Tampa Bay's Most Entertaining Athletes'' covering professional and major college sports, Bradley was included in the top 20 with Carl Crawford, Freddie Solomon, Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, Steven Stamkos, Marty St. Louis, Vinny Lecavalier, Evan Longoria and Rodney Marsh.
Bradley finished fourth in the national scoring race (Harry "Machine Gun'' Kelly of Texas Southern averaged 28.8 to win his second straight scoring crown). The show had just begun. Bradley, named to the Sun Belt Conference's All-Decade Team, played all four USF seasons and had a career 2,319 points.
"In a word, Charlie Bradley was electrifying,'' said Everett Bass, the former USF assistant coach on Lee Rose's staff who was the primary recruiter of Bradley.
Bradley was a 1985 third-round pick of the Sacramento Kings, but never made a final NBA roster because his defensive abilities never properly developed. He played internationally in Argentina, Spain and Venezuela before retiring from basketball in 1994. He has a 28-year career with the City of Tampa's Parks and Recreation Department, often finding purpose in working with special-needs children and the elderly.
He's a married father of two grown daughters and a new grandfather.
"Life is really good,'' Bradley said. "I'm lucky.''
On that fateful day in 1981, USF basketball was lucky to sign Charlie Bradley.
New Era Begins At USF
As a junior at Tampa's Robinson High School, Bradley's tip-in at the overtime buzzer defeated No. 1-ranked Lakeland and sent the Knights to the Class 4A Final Four. After a busy summer of AAU basketball — a circuit that was a shadow of what exists now — Bradley led his team to a 24-0 regular-season finish.
USF, coming off an NIT bid in the first season for Rose and the on-campus Sun Dome, desperately wanted to keep Bradley home. But there was fierce competition from Memphis and primarily Norm Sloan's Florida Gators.
Bradley chose USF.
"Charlie Bradley, in my opinion, put USF basketball on the map,'' said former Bulls point guard and assistant coach Tommy Tonelli, the longtime coach at Wharton High School. "Charlie could've gone to a number of schools nationally and USF was a pretty young program at the time. He chose to stay home because he wanted to make his mark and put his stamp on USF basketball.
"He was as exciting and dynamic and spectacular as any player in the country. There wasn't anything he couldn't do — whether it was shoot the ball from 30 feet, play above the rim, operate in the open court — and his presence gave USF basketball a ton of credibility.''
Grier said he remembers Rose and the USF staff gathering up the team members and saying, "Come on, we're going to see Charlie play.''
Ultimately, it became a recruiting showdown between the Bulls and Gators — and the Bulls prevailed.
"Charlie was not like a lot of the star players who could be prima donnas,'' Bass said. "This kid was really soft-spoken, quiet and polite. He did what he was asked to do. He was a team player. A class act all the way.
"But his talent would make you do a double-take. He was an outstanding long-range shooter, extremely quick, could almost jump out of the gym. Our first season at USF was done and we were building the program, but you could look at Charlie and know we were headed in the right direction.''
At the end of his sophomore season, Bradley found the going a bit tougher, a preview for the theme that would haunt his final two seasons. In the Sun Belt Conference Tournament opener against South Alabama, after he scored 21 points in the first half, Bradley was dogged by a box-and-one defense and had just six in the second half. Jacksonville's defense limited Bradley to a season-low 16 points and 11 shots. In the tournament final, with an automatic NCAA Tournament bid at stake, Bradley was 4-for-17 with just 12 points in a bitter 64-47 defeat against UAB.
Bradley's Bulls wound up in the NIT (and Bradley finished his USF career with another NIT bid in 1985).
"There were people who thought I should've jumped to the NBA after that season,'' Bradley said. "But Al McGuire (former Marquette coach) did one of our games on TV and he pulled me aside. He said I wasn't ready. And I wasn't. So I never gave it another thought.''
Bradley averaged 22.3 points as a junior, then 21.7 points as a sophomore, which is a testament to his persistence. Because after his monumental sophomore season, things got a lot more difficult.
"I saw it all — box-and-one, triangle-and-two, beating me up physically — so I had to find different ways of doing it, like going to the offensive glass,'' Bradley said.
Bradley, who was invited to the 1984 U.S. Olympic Trials and auditioned for the Bobby Knight-led team that won a gold medal, remained a formidable scorer through his college career. There were enough eye-popping plays to fill several highlight reels, but one stands out.
On Jan. 20, 1984, with the Los Angeles Raiders and Washington Redskins sequestered across town, USF hosted the No. 2-ranked DePaul Blue Demons for a sold-out marquee matchup during Super Bowl XVIII weekend in Tampa (one night after a sold-out Frank Sinatra concert graced the arena).
In the first half, Tonelli called out "Rambo'' an instinctive alley-oop play for Bradley. As Bradley moved toward the lane, Tonelli thew the pass … then cringed.
"It was way too high,'' Tonelli said. "I thought I had thrown it in the crowd.''
Bradley, like a bird in flight, adjusted his leap in mid-air. He rose to catch the ball with his back to the basket. Then he slammed home a two-fisted dunk behind his head.
"I've never heard the Sun Dome louder than that moment,'' Tonelli said.
"He's the best offensive player we've seen all season,'' legendary DePaul coach Ray Meyer said afterward. "My goodness, he threw some in from the hinterlands.''
Humble And Grateful
The Charlie Bradley memories are sweet. They make him smile. But he has never been one to live in the past.
Bradley's No. 30 jersey was originally retired in 1987 and all forms of decoration and tribute have existed at the top of USF's arena — including an oversized No. 30 replica jersey that looked big enough to fit King Kong.
"I might gaze up there (at the No. 30 banner) from time to time,'' Bradley said. "But that was a long time ago.''
Forty years, in fact.
With apologies to ESPN's award-winning documentary series, USF is celebrating 40 for (No.) 30.
A few weeks ago, a trivia question was posed on the Yuengling Center scoreboard. "Charlie Bradley'' was the answer. "Come on, Charlie, stand up, take a bow,'' said a friend sitting courtside with Bradley.
"I am NOT doing that,'' an expressionless Bradley said.
About five years ago, at age 54, Bradley was playing in Tampa's city league. He went up for a dunk. He got stuck on the rim.
"My mind said I could do it, but my body said I couldn't,'' Bradley said. "That was my last basketball game.''
Bradley's current passion is pickleball, the rapidly growing, tennis-lite game that has swept the nation. Bradley has won a couple of tournaments and his individual rating is near professional level.
"I don't think I'll be turning pro,'' Bradley said with a laugh.
He's content, living a charmed life with wife Destiny and their two daughters, Desiree (a teacher with a USF master's degree) and Charlize, mother to 6-month-old Braxton.
Conspicuously absent is Bradley's mother, Julia Dantzler, who died six years ago after complications from diabetes. She always thought the basketball was great. But her priority was Bradley's education.
When things began moving fast, when the NBA seemed like a probability, Bradley lost sight of that. As he chased the basketball odyssey, he was a couple of semesters short of his USF degree.
Bradley has recently begun classes. He's going to finish. One day, he'll walk across the stage to get his diploma in an arena where his No. 30 jersey hangs from the rafters. And he'll think of his mom.
"I've been doing my basketball camp for 25 years and the things I always tell the kids are 'Stay in school, listen to the your parents and if you do get the chance to play college ball, get that degree because it's always something you can fall back on,' '' Bradley said.
"There are always new players coming along. My (career scoring) record is still there, but Dominique Jones wouldn't gotten it had he not left (early for the NBA after the 2009-10 season). I don't want to live in the past. I'm just happy to be a good person, an average person, and support my school.''
For Tonelli, even beyond the show-stopping basketball performances, Bradley's humble attitude might be his most endearing quality.
"We see a lot of basketball players these days calling attention to themselves and doing all these theatrical things on the court,'' Tonelli said. "Charlie was never like that. He was so down to earth.
"Very rarely do you see someone with his kind of leaping ability and his ability to finish at the basket, but also his ability to shoot the ball from long range with incredible touch and success. He walks around the USF games like a normal guy and some of those kids have no idea how great he was. He would never brag on himself, but he doesn't need to. For those of us who were there, there was nobody like Charlie Bradley.''
