Up next? 2023 Husker legacy Clemmons already opening eyes
After years of a perceived lack of national-level basketball talent being produced in the state of Nebraska, there has been a serious uptick in that regard over the past few classes.
Looking all the way down the road to 2023, Brennon Clemmons Jr. might be the next in line of a growing list of high-major prospects from The Good Life.
Already measuring in at 6-foot-6, 180 pounds, the Lincoln native is set to begin his high school career as a freshman at North Star this season. But Clemmons Jr. has already started to establish a name for himself as a budding college target.
He’s the son of former Husker guard Brennon Clemmons Sr., who played two seasons at NU from 2001-03 as a junior college transfer and averaged 6.8 points and 4.8 rebounds while starting 17 games as a senior.
Though he has yet to suit up for a high school game, Clemmons Jr. has shined while playing for the Oklahoma City-based Team Griffin AAU program. This summer he was one of 250 players to earn an invitation to the CP3 Rising Stars National Camp in Winston-Salem, N.C., on July 19-21.
By the end of the weekend, he was selected for the event’s top-20 All-American game.
“That was really an eye-opener for me,” Clemmons Jr. said. “It showed me that I really could compete at that level.”
Clemmons Jr. is already taller than his dad (6-2, 185) was at Nebraska while also boasting a 6-6 wingspan, and he’s not done growing yet.
While there hasn’t been any contact from colleges yet on the recruiting front, Clemmons Sr. said his son was starting to get courted by high-profile prep schools around the region.
The plan right now, though, is for Clemmons Jr. to stay in Lincoln and make the varsity squad at North Star as a freshman. Assuming that happens, he’ll have yet another Husker connection as a teammate of 2020 NU commit Donovan Williams.
Clemmons Jr. said the four-star Rivals150 Williams had already started to take him under his wing, offering up advice and support to help follow his path to becoming a Division-I player. They haven’t played in a real game together, but Williams said Clemmons Jr.’s potential was undeniable.
“He’s a 6-6 incoming freshman that can jump out of the gym and can shoot the ball pretty well,” Williams said. “You don’t see that much in the state of Nebraska. For him to come and team up with me, that’s a big deal. I look at it as another superstar on the team, and a superstar in the making for sure.
“The IQ he has, the athleticism he has, how tall and long he is – I kind of get worried because I feel like he’s the only player who could break my all-time scoring record at North Star.”
As a former high-major player himself, Clemmons Sr. said that while his son had plenty of physical tools to work with, the next step was taking his confidence to the next level. If anything, Clemmons Jr. is probably a little too coachable.
“He listens very well, to a point where it kind of scares me because when things break down, you need to be able to react a different way, and sometimes he gets caught still doing exactly what you told him to do,” Clemmons Sr. said.
“It’s a good and bad thing. He’s still so young right now and still learning the game, so if he can listen real well, which he does, just imagine when he gets that confidence and learns the game more to be able to react and adjust to different things.”
Clemmons Jr.'s recruitment process hasn’t begun, but that’s probably going to change fairly soon, especially if he ends up joining the Bradley Beal Elite AAU program next year on the Nike EYBL circuit. His play at the CP3 camp already made him a name to follow nationally, and Nebraska’s coaching staff already has him on their 2023 radar.
For a self-described life-long Husker fan, that’s a pretty big deal.
“Since I was born,” Clemmons Jr. said of how long he’d been rooting for Nebraska basketball. “As soon as I knew what basketball was, knowing that my dad played for them and it being where I’m from and growing up around it, I’ve been a fan all my life…
“It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to play there.”
