"At practices, I would go 'Chris, what's your range?'" recalled Millbrook boys basketball coach Christopher Davis. "He was like, 'Coach, I don't know.' So we started naming states. I would go 'North Carolina' and he would shoot a regular three. I said 'Virginia,' and he'd back up. I'd say 'Texas' and he'd back up really deep so I said 'Montana' and he kind of stopped for a second and was like, 'I don't know where that is, Coach.' I said 'just keep backing up' and he'd make that."
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Clemons is now in eighth place on the NCAA all-time scoring list with 3,033 points.
"I definitely know this is a big deal to be top 10 in scoring all-time," Clemons said. "I try not to really absorb that and feed that into my brain when I go into games."
A lot of people doubted the guard, who stands just 5-foot-9, but his high school coaches always knew he would be a star.
Davis said scoring 30-plus points was never enough for Clemons.
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"We were winning the game pretty handily, and we take him out of the game and he's mad and I'm like, 'Chris what's wrong' and he goes 'Coach, I didn't get a dunk tonight," Davis said. "I was like, 'Chris, you scored 35 points, you have seven assists, five blocks, you pinned a guy stuffed to the backboard' and he said, 'I know, but I didn't get a dunk tonight,' and it just made me laugh because he got upset he couldn't dunk when he had an awesome game."
Davis, as well assistant coach Jamal Williams, said they believe his talents will take him far in the NBA.
"He is going to make a lot of people pay for doubting him," Williams said.