When the call came from the Southern Miss football team following Saturday’s 28-7 football victory over Southern Methodist, Jay Hopson was overwhelmed.

He sat in a hospital room in Indiana wanting to be in Hattiesburg with his team, but surgery to remove two cancerous tumors obviously took precedent.

“That phone call was something special to me,” Hopson said on Tuesday from his coaching office at Southern Miss. “It’s never fun sitting around doing nothing. The one thing I tried to do was stay positive about everything.

“It’s critical for me to stay positive because the Lord has blessed me with a lot, so I really can’t complain.”

The call from his team may have been outdone by only one other. It came from Sister Paulinas Oakes of the Religious Sisters of Mercy, a nun who taught Hopson at St. Francis elementary school.

“She said all the nuns were praying for me, so I knew I was in good hands,” Hopson said.

Hopson, who underwent radiation treatment for testicular cancer 12 years ago, earlier this month discovered a reoccurance of the disease. He saw doctors in Hattiesburg, then went for a second opinion and eventually treatment at the University of Indiana.

He missed coaching only one game — the SMU game — but the phone call and finding out the team awarded him the game ball were special.

“This one is for Jay Hopson,” Southern Miss coach Jeff Bower said after the SMU victory. “The kids had a little something extra to play for. We had him on the phone in the locker room and some of the kids had a chance to talk to him.

“I’m sure he is feeling a little better than he would have had we lost the game.”

Hopson returned Monday night to Hattiesburg from Indiana and was back in the office Tuesday morning. He will travel with the team to Huntington, W.Va., for Sunday night’s game against Marshall, but he is moving into things slowly.

“I want to help out as much as possible,” said Hopson, in his third season as the Golden Eagles’ defensive coordinator. “The most important thing, though, is getting healthy.”

He said he is weighing different options as far as future treatments. The most common cancer treatment, radiation, may not be an option because he underwent radiation treatment during his first bout with cancer.

“I have to talk to the oncologist here in Hattiesburg to figure out what the best treatment will be,” said Hopson, a former Warren Central quarterback who went on to play at Ole Miss.

Getting tested about every three months is an option he is leaning towar, but he said many people have asked about his future treatments and he just does not know right now.

Defensive assistant coaches Bill Wilt, Lytrell Pollard and Dave Wommack have been coaching the defense in Hopson’s absence.

Hopson is in his third season, and second go-round, as a Southern Miss assistant coach. He coached the defensive backs for three seasons before moving to Ole Miss as the Rebels defensive backs coach for one season.

In 2005, he returned to Hattiesburg as the team’s defensive coordinator and has continued the tradition of the Golden Eagles’ strong defensive units. The Eagles are 3-3 this season heading into the Marshall game, which will be a reunion of sorts for Hopson, who worked as the Thundering Herd’s defensive backs coach for five seasons (1996-2000).

Hopson still has many family members living in Vicksburg and is in charge of recruiting this area. He said he has received many phone calls of prayers from the Vicksburg community and that, “they helped out tremendously.”