Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Pitt men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon talks to the media yesterday about the death of his sister Maggie Dixon in April. Click photo for larger image.

Down on the Petersen Events Center floor, Pitt players participated in a pickup game. They were jawing and laughing, going through the paces of a usual offseason workout.

Simultaneously, outside the basketball offices upstairs, their coach was getting choked up talking about his sister, Maggie, who died unexpectedly six weeks ago from a heart ailment.

While everyone around Pitt's coach has settled back into some sense of normalcy, Jamie Dixon is still trying to deal with the pain of losing his sister, the women's coach at West Point, at age 28.

"I've gotten so many e-mails saying it's happened to other people at a young age," Dixon said. "You just wonder why. People have that image of her being carried off the floor [after the Patriot League championship game]. And to have something like that a couple of weeks later ... people will always ask why."

Dixon fought back tears on a few occasions in his first meeting with local reporters since Maggie's death April 6. Dixon said yesterday that it was time for him to send a message to the people in Western Pennsylvania who have overwhelmed his family with letters of support.

"I was talking with my parents late last night. We were on the phone as we have been a lot lately," Dixon said. "As everyone knows we've had a tremendous outpouring of support beyond our wildest dreams throughout the country, throughout the world, really. The e-mails and letters have been coming over from all over. As my parents mentioned last night, they've been amazed by the number coming from Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. I wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of my family to thank everybody in this area. It really means a lot to us. You never really know how much it means to have this kind of support. It really has pulled us through some tough times."

Dixon has been back at work for a few weeks, and he has had plenty of basketball-oriented tasks to keep him busy. He has a couple of assistant coaching positions to fill. He is busy arranging an NBA workout for junior center Aaron Gray and he's still recruiting.

But Dixon only wanted to speak about Maggie yesterday and the way she will be remembered. The emotions are still raw. Tears welled in his eyes when he recalled memories of his sister.

"I like talking about her," he said. "It's tough at times. People are sometimes uncomfortable bringing her name up and don't quite know what to say. But if it's going to be tough, I can get through that. I believe people should know about Maggie and what she did. If I look a little uncomfortable at times, it's not because I don't want to talk about her. It's just that sometimes it's difficult.

"It's become a story that's touched so many people's hearts. That's been amazing. I've gotten so many letters from people who went through similar deaths at a young age. They're trying to give us some comfort. Maybe we can give them some comfort as well. In so many ways, it touched a lot of people we didn't know. Maggie had a way of doing that. She touched so many people."

Dixon said he takes comfort in the fact that he was around Maggie so much in the weeks before her death. Maggie came to Madison Square Garden to watch Pitt play in the Big East tournament. A few weeks later, they attended the men's Final Four together in Indianapolis. And a few days after that, he slept at her home at West Point while on a recruiting trip.

Jamie and Maggie awoke the morning of April 5, had breakfast and worked out. Jamie left for Portsmouth, Va., where he was going to see Carl Krauser play in an NBA camp. At the same time, Maggie had gone to the home of a friend and collapsed. By the time Jamie hopped a plane back to New York and got to the hospital, a respirator was keeping Maggie alive.

"The memories I'll always have are the last days, the last couple of weeks," Dixon said. "In the last couple of years, we had always been separate. She was in Chicago, and I was in Pittsburgh. She was in San Diego when she was playing. Those last few weeks we were together ... for some reason, we spent more time together the last two weeks than when we lived together in California."