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Hempy leaving as one of Wooster’s all-time greats

• Tom Rife: Livin' the Team
• February 28, 2020
• 4274

Greatness in his genes. Ice in his veins. Honey in his heart.

It won’t be easy to fill the stylish squeakers of senior Danyon Hempy once this men’s basketball season is in the books at The College of Wooster. The 6-foot-5 Fighting Scots cornerstone will leave behind more than remarkable offensive numbers. Retiring head coach Steve Moore and Hempy’s teammates will bid farewell to a relentless competitor who has worn the No. 32 jersey with more humility than could possibly have been measured in any scouting report.

Hempy wasn’t just another “potential recruit” when he amassed countless honors at River Valley High School. He was, as mentors such as Moore and COW head-coach-to-be Doug Cline like to say, a “find.”

“We didn’t think we would get him. People were all over Danyon. He had a lot of options,” Moore said recently. “He came to us with a lot of skills and just kept improving offensively and defensively. He’s an outstanding talent; that’s for sure.”

Div. III hoops just seemed to be the right fit for Hempy, whose father, Dick, was one of Otterbein’s all-time stars, a warrior whose gutsy performances earned him Div. III National Player of the Year kudos as a junior. Dick Hempy shone as a three-time first-team All-American, ultimately inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

To this day Dick Hempy’s black-and-white action photo is one of the many conversation pieces in a cluttered trophy case that takes up an entire wall at the folksy G&R Tavern in “downtown” Waldo. The cash-only joint on the corner of Main and Marion also features the unmistakable fragrance of its famous fried bologna sandwiches that lure hankering casual diners from throughout the region.

The irony is that, as natural as it might sound, Dick said he and Danyon rarely “talk basketball.”

“We really don’t,” Dad said. “There’ll be times where he calls me or we text and things like that. And I’ll say, ‘Hey, you know, maybe you ought to do this or that.’ But our relationship is, you know, we kind of separate it a little bit. We’re extremely close, OK? But we don’t talk basketball much. Danyon’s a pretty well-rounded kid. And if you really get to know him, you understand that. He’s a lot more than just basketball and things like that, you know. And so Danyon and I have a lot of shared interests outside of basketball, such as just life in general.”

The one thing Dick did preach to his son was that no matter how many points he might eventually score, he always would be judged by how he represented himself on and off the court.

“I always told him that whether it’s fair or unfair, people are going to judge you from afar from what they see in the stands and what you do on the floor. People are going to walk out the gym with a perception of you, not even knowing you,” the elder Hempy said. “So he carries himself in a really good manner, and I’m really proud of that, of what he does that way.”

It was after an overnight recruiting visit to Wooster that Danyon made up his own mind to play for Moore and the Scots. He said Wooster players Dan Fanelly and Mitch Balser treated him like family — like a brother — and he liked that a lot.

“So once I felt that, it was like, ‘I’m coming here to play.’ I knew they were good. And I wanted to play with some great players and great coaches,” Hempy said.

Heading into the 2020 North Coast Athletic Conference tournament, Hempy became one of those “great players” in his own right. With a career-high 40-point effort in a hard-to-swallow 88-87 loss to DePauw in the regular-season finale, Hempy climbed to within 33 points of matching Bryan Nelson as the program’s third-leading all-time scorer.

He then put Nelson in the rearview mirror by pouring in 35 points in Tuesday’s bounce-back NCAC quarterfinal victory over the visiting Allegheny Gators, adding six rebounds in the Scots’ 92-66 romp.

How on earth did the Scots, and Hempy in particular, overcome the agony of the DePauw loss, clear their minds and make an about-face in only a couple of days?

“It was hard. There was a lot of emotion that day,” Hempy said Tuesday. “Losing on Senior Night obviously hurt, and losing on coach Moore’s night hurt too. We just put that behind us as soon as we could and got back to work yesterday and the day before. We know what we’re capable of. We just have to go out there and do it. We still have to play hard, play with intensity, play solid defense, and if we do that, we think we’re a pretty good team.”

After the Scots’ most recent victory, Moore summed Hempy’s grit in just a few well-chosen words.

“He’s very determined,” Moore said of his team leader. “He’s very confident right now. That’s the big thing. Those two words sum him up best: determined and confident.”

In addition to his 1,959 career points, Hempy is among the school’s best-ever in career field goals, career 3-pointers, career free throws, career blocked shots and career steals.

So Hempy, who has averaged an exhausting 35 minutes of playing time each game this season, always will be mentioned in the same “Who’s Who” as such former Wooster greats as Tom Dinger, James Cooper, Kyle Witucky, Ian Franks, John Ellenwood, Tom Port, Fanelly and Cline.

Moore, especially, helped Hempy see the “big picture.”

“Playing under coach Moore for all these years, he just preaches playing for the team and all that stuff,” Hempy said. “And I think that outside of basketball, that goes into a lot of different things, just helping the person next to you. Don’t be selfish. Just go about your life trying to help others. And that’s something that has been important to me personally. It’s about just being a good person overall and living life to the fullest. I’ve tried to have fun being a good leader.”

Hempy often has been pictured slamming home vicious dunk shots — he had two against Allegheny — and elevating high above an opponent for one of his patented jumpers. Perhaps the most endearing, telling photo of Hempy’s COW career was snapped just days ago by the college’s Matt Dilyard after the Scots’ heartbreaking overtime loss to DePauw.

On the sideline just prior to a ceremony honoring Moore’s historic 33-year coaching career, Hempy scooted his chair close to Moore. The teary-eyed senior, with towel in hand, leaned to his left, placing his head briefly on Moore’s shoulder.

Had only Hempy’s desperation heave from half court gone in as overtime expired, those at the G&R would have bragged about it forever.