Jay Simpson was just doing what he'd done most of his life, running the floor, rebounding, scoring around the basket.

Even dunked a few times, as he brought his team to the cusp of a victory.

Then, it came to an abrupt and unexpected end.

The doors to the gym came open and in slipped Brandon Brantley, flanked by Kenny Lowe, quietly as to not be detected. Brantley stopped the game in-session, came onto the playing floor and handed Simpson his cell phone.

"Jay," the voice on the phone said, "do you want to die?"

You see, this wasn't one of the thousands of basketball games Simpson had played through the majority of his 20 years on this earth.

It was a pickup game at Purdue's Recreational Sports Center - the "Co-Rec," as everyone still calls it - in April, roughly four months after Simpson collapsed in-game at Nebraska and was soon after diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially lethal condition of the heart. It brought about his early retirement from the sport and from there on out precluded him from participating in most any physically demanding form of activity.

His days as a competitive basketball player are over, as the voice on the other end of Brantley's phone reminded him in no uncertain terms.

It was that of Purdue's team trainer, Chad Young.

"I was in the middle of the game and my team was up 13-11, something like that, and we were going to 15," Simpson recalls. "I turn around and I see Coach Brantley and Coach Lowe walk through the door and we had two points left, so I thought, 'OK, I'm already caught so I may as well try to finish out the last couple points.' Coach Brantley wasn't having it. He stopped the game in the middle of it, gave me the phone."

Simpson, whose 6-foot-8 frame is unmistakable and his story widely known, was spotted at the Co-Rec that day and the basketball program made aware. Brantley and Lowe were first on the scene, by sheer virtue of the fact they were around the basketball offices at the time.

Simpson took the phone, heard Young give him "the speech he's given me a million times, that I appreciate him giving me," went home and reflected, but not until after an extended sit-down with his former coaches outside the building.

"We probably stood out there for an hour," Brantley recalled, "just talking to him."

The message, whatever it was, hit home and served as a turning point of sorts for Simpson in his acclimation to life post-basketball.

"After I got caught, I went home and thought about it and realized, 'You know, these guys really care about me. Some people wouldn't care,'" Simpson said. "They'd think, 'He's hoopin' and that's on him. It's his life.' These guys really do truly care about me."

Simpson said he was being "hard-headed" by playing that day, perhaps still a bit naïve toward, or cavalier against, the zero-sum game of his new reality.

Since that day, Simpson says it's truly sunk in.

"It's got to be tough, man," Brantley said. "That's your whole persona, the game you love, something you've spent so much time on. It's difficult for him, so I didn't want to blast him or anything like that, didn't want to say, 'Man, what are you doing? ... We talked about a lot of stuff. It was tough."

Life has changed for Simpson, but for better as much as worse.

He admits to struggling at times acclimating to life away from basketball, his focus now having to lie so much on the classroom. He admits there have been "rough times."

"I'm doing better than I was, though," Simpson said last week in an interview at Mackey Arena prior to a session with one of his athletic department tutors. "It's taken me some time to realize, 'This is it,' and I don't have to worry about anything else. I've been so used to going to practice, being on a basketball schedule, now I'm just a student and on a different schedule. It's different and it's taken some getting used to. I'm getting there. I feel like by next semester I should be completely used to it and pick it up."

The former Boilermaker big man, though, says he is happy.

So much of that feeling, he said, stems from his new son, Kye. The 4-month-old lives in Simpson's native Champaign, Ill., but makes frequent visits.

"It's changed everything, changed my whole life," Simpson said. "Now, I'm not just making decisions for myself but I have someone else. I have to make the right decision at all times, no matter what."

His entire life, Simpson's envisioned a future for himself in basketball. He admits to still closing his eyes from time to time and hearing his name being called over the P.A. in Mackey Arena. And he's not removed himself entirely from trying to make a career out of basketball, as he now aspires to coach.

"He's going to be a silly coach," long-time friend and former teammate Rapheal Davis joked, "but that's a good direction for him to keep his head in it."

Simpson's new goal is part of the reason he watches pick-up games when he's home in Champaign or keeps a presence around his Purdue teammates in West Lafayette, keeping most privileges of a scholarship athlete minus only the ability to participate.

His life changed profoundly in more ways than one, Simpson sees a new light at the end of the tunnel.

"I'm only 20 years old," said Simpson, on pace to get his OLS degree (and communications minor) next May. "I have my whole life ahead of me. I have a son now. That's really where all my focus is, that and school.

"Everything happens for a reason and God works in mysterious ways. I just feel like it's all going to be part of my story. I just can't wait to find out what that story's going to be."

There are regrets, though, products of the perspective that come with time.

"Now since it's been some time since it happened, I realize more than ever you can't take anything for granted," Simpson said, "and if you really want something you have to work at it and give it your all at all times, because regret is really the worst thing to live with.

"Sometimes I regret not going as hard as I could in a practice or a game. I just feel like I could have been a lot better than I was. I could have had a bigger role on the team, a more important role on the team. That's all on me and something I have to live with."

There's some irony to that "regret," however.

Had Nebraska never happened, Simpson might have played basketball 20 more years and walked away unscathed.

Or a player who once lived for the hardwood might have perished on it, same way Reggie Lewis did, or Hank Gathers, or John Stewart.

So had he gone a little bit harder during a high school practice, an AAU game or a summer conditioning session in college, Simpson's story might have been a tragedy.

"I could have been dead," he said.

Instead, Simpson has his whole life in front of him.

Just a very different one.