Because, for the next 48 hours, college basketball is your life - or, at the very least for any self-respecting person, it should be. Some classic stuff is going to happen: you'll see heartbreak (you know you love the CBS pan-down-the-bench-of-the-higher-seed-when-they're-about-to-lose camera angle), ecstasy (think the Hampton coach running around everywhere and dancing, then getting picked up with his feet still jitter-bugging in the air in 2001), and of course, the buzzer beater.

The buzzer beater is a basketball staple, although this season in the NFL certainly provided us with quite a few last-second field goals. Nowhere is the buzzer beater more revered than in the NCAA Tournament - half the clips on any generic television promo advertising Tournament coverage come from the buzzer beaters that are firmly ingrained in our minds: Christian Laettner (2x), Tate George, James Forrest, Richard Hamilton, Keith Smart, etc.

Unfortunately, none of those bad boys occured in the first round: those glorious 48 hours of wall-to-wall basketball where everything else about your life momentarily stops while you try to figure out how Wright State has a second-half lead on Pittsburgh.

These buzzer beaters below, though, did occur in the first round. Check 'em out.

(5) Jermaine Wallace: Moderately humorous story about this one. I had been at a bar/restaurant in Adams Morgan with two of my friends, watching Georgetown defeat Northern Iowa (an 2:30pm ish tip on Friday last year), and after that one was over, we walked back to my friend's apartment. It was roughly 4 blocks away, and I was still toting my (way too heavy for only 2 days of staying in DC) NIKE duffel. As soon as we unlocked the apartment and I walked in, Northwestern State inbounded the ball and Wallace drilled his shot to give them a victory over Iowa in a 14 vs. 3 game. My friends and I went nuts. Literally, the second we walked in this happened.

Anyway, I throw that at No. 5 because it might have been the first paragraph in the last chapter of Alford at Iowa. Those dudes won the Big 10 last year, had a generally stacked team, and couldn't get out of the first round. Sheesh.

(4) Mike Miller: Miller gets the No. 4 slot because after he hit this buzzer beater to beat Butler in the first round of the 2000 NCAA Tournament, the Gators went all the way to the title game before losing to "The Flintstones" of Michigan State. In some respects, it might also represent a high point of Miller's basketball existence.

(3) Drew Nicholas: I was out to dinner with a girlfriend in college and was in a cab back when one of my roommates called me. "Yo, did you just SEE THAT?" he intoned. They were at a dive bar for an organizational fundraiser. Here's the catch: he wasn't referencing Nicholas. About 10 minutes before Nicholas flushed UNC-Wilmington while running into the tunnel - the year after Maryland had won the entire thing - Brandon Miller of Butler knocked Mississippi State out with a similar buzzer beater. When I got back to my girlfriend's apartment - her and her roommates were playing beer pong, which I began to mentally prepare for - I got to see Nicholas' runner first-hand, thus marking the first of two times I walked into an apartment literally right before a game-winning NCAA Tournament shot. Some dudes have all the luck. I later broke up with that girl, although that has almost nothing to do with Drew Nicholas.

(2) Gabe Lewulis: Everybody knows this one - UCLA, the year after they won it all, getting knocked out in Game 1 on a classic Princeton cut. I give this a high rating for two reasons besides all the obvious ones: (1) it was, I believe, the first NCAA Tournament game Gus Johnson called for CBS, and while he was understated by his current standards, you have to reason that if he opened his CBS career calling a blowout, we would have all had a much different experience last year during UCLA vs. Gonzaga; and (2) this was a late Friday night game - the last time slot of the first round - and as a result, you didn't hear about it, typically, until Saturday morning. Those are the best kind of NCAA Tounament moments. "Wait, what happened?"

(1)Bryce Drew: What more can you say about this? Coach's son, overly-practiced play, small school, total heave? Unreal. Absolutely unreal.

Some Honorable Mentions

Nat Burton: I'm a total homer for putting this here, because I went to Georgetown, but Burton's drive down the lane against Arkansas in 2001 - another game called by Johnson for CBS - was still an impressive finish by a guy who didn't have many in a game that exceeded all expectations for the match-up. Granted, it wasn't the best moment on the court that night - Hampton beat Iowa State later on, a huge 15 over 2 upset -but Burton's drive, and subsequent Georgetown reaction, was still fairly impressive.

Chris Lofton: Ha. Clark Kellogg thinks his name is "James" (the Bills receiver) or "Craig," depending on which half-hour of the Selection Show you watched - the first part or the second. Kellogg. Sheesh. Anyway, you can't rank this higher because it's preposterous to think a 2 seed would need a buzzer beater to defeat a 15 seed, but they did - and that's what Lofton delivered for Bruce Pearl and company against Winthrop last year. If Russell Carter or Colin Falls does this to Winthrop again this year, they might need a new team psychologist.