Mike Vaccaro 25 years after losing his best friend on 9/11, Rick Pitino still refuses to say goodbye By Mike Vaccaro Published Sep. 11, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET Billy Minardi and Rick Pitino. Most of us, we spend time away with even the closest members of our family, the dearest of our friends, there comes a moment, much as you enjoy each other’s company, when the sweet moment of goodbye beckons. Take a few days. Take a breather. Call you again in a few days.
Over the course of the 32 years that Billy Minardi knew Rick Pitino, that wasn’t an option.
“We spoke every day, two times a day, without fail, when we weren’t with each other,” Pitino says. “Every single day. On the road, whenever one of us was overseas, it didn’t matter. That was just a routine part of the day.”
This started sometime in the fall of 1969. Billy was a freshman who lived on Long Island, Hicksville. He had just started St. Dominic’s High in Oyster Bay. Pitino was the big man on that campus, even standing a shade under 6 feet, a rising senior and a star for the Doms basketball team, one of the finest players on Long Island.
