On the night before the most important basketball tournament he’d ever played, Peter Berry spun his wheelchair down to the dark, empty lobby of a TownePlace Suites outside Whitewater, Wis., and contemplated the meaning of life.
Peter’s roommate was asleep upstairs. Everyone on the University of Alabama men’s wheelchair basketball team was exhausted. They’d ridden 16 hours on a bus from Tuscaloosa the day before. Then they’d spent this day simultaneously preparing for their first-round matchup and keeping their minds off the pressure: a few heated snowball fights, a few rounds of bowling, a few hands of cards.
David E. Klutho/Sports Illustrated
