Overview:
Clemence is expected to help fill the void left by graduating All-Big West Conference forward Miles Norris
UC Santa Barbara landed its third highly rated basketball transfer of the spring on Tuesday when Kansas forward Zach Clemence announced that he’ll be joining the Gauchos next season.
Clemence, a 6-foot-10 and 230-pound incoming junior, was a four-star recruit in the Class of 2021 out of Sunrise Christian High School of Bel Aire, Kan. He was ranked as the No. 34 recruit that year in ESPN’s list of top 100 national recruits, No. 35 by Rivals.com, and No. 40 by 247Sports.
Injuries limited his play at Kansas the last two seasons. He saw action in 12 of the Jayhawks’ first 14 games of their NCAA championship season of 2022, but a foot injury sidelined him for a large portion of the Big 12 season.
A concussion and a knee injury also kept Clemence off the court for parts of his sophomore year.
He played in 44 games in two seasons at Kansas, averaging 1.8 points and 1.6 rebounds.
“He’s a great kid,” Kansas coach Bill Self said during last season. “The expectations for him, in my mind, were pretty high going into the year.
“It hasn’t worked out to this date in terms of what the expectations (were). I thought it’d be a 50-50 coin flip whether or not he’d start for us this year.”
Clemence is known to be both a prolific three-point shooter and skilled three-level scorer. He’s expected to help fill the void left by Miles Norris, a 6-10 All-Big West forward who is graduating next month.
He led Sunrise Christian to a 21-4 record and a runner-up finish in the 2021 GEICO High School National Championships in Florida while averaging 10.5 points and 5.0 rebounds.
Clemence also averaged 10 points as a junior while shooting 49% from three-point range to help Sunrise Christian finish 22-3 against a national schedule.
His mother, Dusti Clemence, said more than two dozen schools pursued him in the transfer portal. He recently took a recruiting trip to Providence as well as UCSB.
“They wanted a stretch-four — a guy that can shoot the ball and not just sit in the paint,” Dusti Clemence said of the Gauchos. “It will be a good fit for him.”
The Gauchos also landed a pair of centers for next season. Yohan Traore, a 6-10 incoming sophomore, was a former five-star recruit who played for Auburn last year. Mezziah Oakman, a 7-foot incoming junior from the City College of San Francisco, committed to UCSB last fall.
Other players to sign with the Gauchos this spring are former four-star recruit Ben Shtolzberg, a 6-4, incoming sophomore guard from NCAA quarterfinalist Creighton; and Jason Fontenet, a 6-5 guard from top 10 national high school power Bella Vista Prep of Scottsdale, Ariz.
UCSB will return 6-5 point guard Ajay Mitchell, the reigning Big West Conference Player of the Year, as well as key wing players Josh Pierre-Louis and Cole Anderson from last year’s team.
The Gauchos, who set a school record for wins with last year’s 27-8 record, won the Big West Conference Tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last three years. They also shared the regular-season title with UC Irvine.