The full impact of Robbie Avila, the 6-10 center at Indiana State whose goggles have inspired catchy nicknames like Cream Abdul-Jabbar, could be clear on Selection Sunday.

Indiana State missed a chance to secure an automatic bid when it lost to Drake Sunday in the championship game of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, and they’ll be forced to watch from the sideline this week as their fate is determined.

But Bruce Rasmussen is among three former chairmen of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee who told USA TODAY Sports Avila could nudge Indiana State past other bubble teams.

The field of 68 teams, as selected by the committee, will be announced Sunday.

“He’s a HUGE factor in their being in the discussion,’’ Rasmussen, the former Creighton athletic director who chaired the men’s basketball committee in 2018, wrote of Avila and Indiana State in a text message.

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Short on athleticism but highly skilled, Avila leads the team in scoring (17.5 points per game) and is second both in rebounds (6.1 per game) and assists (3.8 per game). Indiana State ranks eighth nationally in scoring with 84.4 points per game.

“As a committee member, you’re going to be impressed watching the game film of Indiana State and watching (Avila play),’’ said Mark Hollis, the former Michigan State athletic director who was chairman of the men’s basketball committee in 2017.

BRACKETOLOGY: Who’s in? Who’s out? Our final field of 68 prediction

Hollis also said Avila has proven he has the “unique ability’’ to carry a team. “And something like that could sway a vote,’’ he added.

Craig Thompson, the former Mountain West commissioner who served a four-year term on the committee, said he agrees Avila could be a factor.

 “Some (committee members) might put more focus on, do they have a player that can carry them?’’ Thompson said. “In this case, yes, Indiana State does.’’  

The Robbie Avila primer

The goggle madness began Feb. 28.

That night against Evansville, Avila scored 35 points to go along with eight rebounds and five assists. The morning after the game, Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio tweeted out the nickname Cream Abdul-Jabbar.

“My phone was blowing up left and right,’’ Avila said.

In came NIL opportunities, interview requests and, on social media, more nicknames, including Larry Blurred (a nod to Indiana State legend Larry Bird) and Steph Blurry.

Now, about those googles.

Avila started wearing them in the second grade when he started playing football and the helmet wouldn’t fit over his glasses. So his parents bought him prescription goggles, which he continued to wear while playing sports.

In high school, Avila said, he briefly tried contact lenses. His older brother, Juan Jr., intervened.

Recalled Robbie Avila, “He was the one that told me, ‘You’re not you without your goggles. You’re not even Robbie anymore. You can’t wear contacts. You’ve got to go back to the googles.”

So he did.

Blossoming on the basketball court, He blossomed in high school, has continued to develop at Indiana State and how has an assortment of moves and nicknames. In addition to Cream Abdul-Jabbar, there’s Larry Nerd, College Jokic, Steph Blurry, Robbie Bucket while some people still call him Goggles but with affection.

He takes no offense, especially considering an attorney who represents him says he’s negotiating NIL deals with Oakley and Rec Specs thanks to the goggles.

“It’s kind of been part of my brand,’’ he said.

Larry Blurred conjures up past

Unlike Larry Blurred, Larry Bird needed no prescriptive lenses. He led Indiana State to the NCAA tournament championship game in 1979 before the Sycamores lost to Michigan State and Magic Johnson.

Since then, Indiana State has only three appearances in the tournament and won only one game. Unexpected is a fair description of the team’s recent history.

Josh Schertz had been a head coach only at Division II Lincoln Memorial before taking over at Indiana State before the 2020-21 season. Under his watch, the Sycamores finished 11-20 during his inaugural season, 23-13 the following season and the team is 26-8 this season and won the regular-season Missouri Valley Conference title.

The climb would not have been possible without Avila, who in part credits playing chess with his grandpa for increasing his basketball IQ.

“He used to whup me every single day when I was younger,’’ Avila said.

Avila said he eventually got good enough to beat his grandfather, and what he learned has improved in basketball IQ. Take the backdoor pass, for example.

“I can’t just throw it out there because the help guy might be pulled in,’’ he said. “So I might have to skip it to the corner. And just being able to read pretty much all five defenders on the court is something I’m able to do, kind of slow the game down a little bit kind of helps me.

“So my basketball IQ kind of makes up for my lack of athleticism, my speed and my jumping ability.’’

What happens next for Indiana State

Likely Wednesday, each of the committee members will submit two lists key to the selection process, said Tom Burnett, who in 2021-2022 served as chairman of the committee.

He said one list will be comprised of approximately 20-25 teams the respective committee member thinks should be in the field of 68 regardless of happens this week in the conference tournaments.

The second list consists of teams under consideration, Burnett said. Indiana State likely be on the lists of teams under consideration. As the week progresses, more teams are moved to the list of at-large schools from the list of schools under consideration, according to Burnett.

Those teams under consideration likely will be impacted by what former Mountain West commissioner calls “the dreaded bid stealers.’’ Those are teams that surprisingly secure an automatic bids by winning a conference tournament and are awarded at-large bids by perform well in the conference tournaments.

Meanwhile, Indiana State can only watch and hope other bubble teams perform poorly and there’s a shortage of bid stealers. Thompson estimates Indiana State is one of six to eight teams competing for the final four spots.

Indiana State’s resume lacks Quad 1 wins

What could hurt Indiana State’s chances: The Sycamores are 1-5 in Quad 1 games, which carry the highest value among games. But they’re 4-1 in Quad 2 games, games of the second highest value of Quad 1 through 4 games.

Indiana State played only one ranked team, then-No. 24 Alabama on the road, and lost 102-80. But Avila was sidelined with a back injury.

“That is important,’’ Rasmussen of Avila’s absence might reduce the importance of the game.

Indiana State played only one other game against Power Five team, Michigan State, and lost 87-75 on the road. But even with Avila in foul trouble that day, the game was tied 66-66 with about eight minutes to play before Michigan State slowly pulled away.

Rasmussen said he considers a team’s record on the road and at neutral sites better indicators than Quad 1 and Quad 2 when determining team strength. Indiana State was 9-4 on the road and 6-1 at neutral sites.

Then there’s the overall record of 28-6.

“A 28-win team is going to have the attention of the room,’’ Burnett said.

As compelling as Indiana State and Avila might be, however, Burnett pointed out another storyline: Samford’s head coach, Bucky McMillian, was coaching high school four years ago. Now he’ll lead Samford to the NCAA men’s tournament for the first time since 2000 after his team secured an automatic bid by winning the Southern Conference.

“We’ve got the luxury of so many great stories,’’ Burnett said.

But only one involving a celebrated pair of goggles.

As millions of people fill out their brackets for the NCAA Tournament, let’s get one thing out of the way first.

You aren’t going to fill out a perfect bracket, so don’t even try it.

But if you are so bold and want to anyway, the odds of filling out a perfect bracket are about 1 in 9.2 quintillion (that’s nine, followed by 18 other numbers). If you do happen to get lucky and pick each of the 63 tournament games correctly, go ahead and start playing Powerball as well.

All hope is not lost; there is still a chance to win your office pool or whatever bracket challenge you have entered and look like a hero, so buckle up for the best three weeks of the year.

SELECTION SUNDAY LIVE: Read more about how Selection Sunday unfolds and where teams land in the brackets

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So here are a few tips to help make your bracket not look like a complete dumpster fire:

High-five

Since 2013, at least one No. 5 seed or lower has reached the Final Four, so go ahead and pencil in an underdog to make it to Phoenix.

Last year, UConn, a No. 4 seed in the West, broke a string of five straight champions that were top seeds in their region, and none of the top seeds made it to the Elite Eight. Only six times in the past 37 tournaments has a 12-seed failed to advance past the first round, including last season.

It’s madness, but let’s not get crazy

Don’t load up on chalk to improve your odds of filling out a half-decent bracket but don’t go nuts with upsets.

The 2023 tournament was an anomaly, with no No. 1 seeds in the Final Four; this was only the fourth time since the NCAA began seeding the field in 1979.

Two five-seeds (San Diego State and Miami), a No. 4 seed (UConn), and a No. 9 seed (Florida Atlantic) made the Final Four last year, so keep that in mind. If you are looking to pencil in all four No. 1 seeds for the Final Four, that’s not wise either. Only once have all four No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four (2008: North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis, and Kansas).

Better off flipping a coin

You don’t have to be a basketball aficionado to win an office bracket, and even the ones who analyze and study this stuff for a living really don’t know what the hell they are doing when it comes to picking a semi-accurate bracket.

But there is nothing wrong with choosing winning teams based on color, animal mascots, or the perceived attractiveness of the athletes playing. If that’s the case, go ahead and flip a coin, and chances are that you will finish ahead of your peers in a bracket pool.

But if you want to put a little basketball knowledge in your brackets, here are a few more interesting tidbits:

Since 1985, 16 out of 38 teams that cut down the nets won their conference tournament, and only twice in the past 10 tournaments.

Pick a team with blue uniforms: Since 2004, only Louisville in 2013 and Baylor in 2021 have won the tournament without blue as a primary uniform color.

Good luck, win all the money you can, and remember the IRS will want their cut as well.

Another quarterback domino has fallen.

The Chicago Bears have traded former first-round pick Justin Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the teams announced Saturday night.

The Steelers are sending the Bears a 2025 sixth-round pick that could become a fourth-round pick. Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the pick becomes a fourth-rounder if Fields plays 51% of the offensive snaps this season.

The trade comes one day after the Steelers traded 2022 first-round pick Kenny Pickett to the Philadelphia Eagles. That move appeared to pave the way for free agent pickup Russell Wilson to start, but the Fields addition brings added intrigue to the Steelers’ offseason.

Even if the Pittsburgh job is indeed Wilson’s for 2024 — ESPN reported that was still the case — Fields, just 25 years old, gives the Steelers a potential quarterback of the future. The 11th overall pick in 2021 showed occasional flashes of brilliance in his three seasons in Chicago. How everything shakes out remains to be seen.

NFL STATS CENTRAL: The latest NFL scores, schedules, odds, stats and more.

For the Bears the calculus is more simple: With Fields now gone, they will be taking a quarterback with the first pick in the 2024 draft. USC quarterback Caleb Williams, the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner, is the likely choice.

Saturday’s trade brought closure to Fields’ time in Chicago. The two sides parting ways (mostly) seemed inevitable ever since the Bears received the top pick in this year’s draft via the Carolina Panthers — a selection that ended up in the Bears’ hands after they stuck with Fields and traded out of the top spot in the 2023 draft.

Bears GM Ryan Poles said in the lead-up to free agency that the franchise wanted to ‘do right’ by Fields. The Ohio State product said he was ‘tired of hearing the talk. I just want it to be over.’

Now, it is.

‘We have engaged in multiple trade conversations in recent weeks and believe trading Justin at this time to Pittsburgh is what is best for both Justin and the Bears,’ Poles said in a statement. ‘Today we spoke to Justin to inform him of the trade and the rationale behind it for us as a club. We want to thank him for his tireless dedication, leadership and all he poured into our franchise and community the last three years and wish him the best towards a long and successful NFL career.’

Fields went 10-28 in his three seasons in Chicago, throwing for 6,675 yards and 40 touchdowns to 30 interceptions. He completed 60.3% of his passes. He also electrified on the ground, particularly in 2022 when he rushed for 1,143 yards and eight touchdowns.

‘Can’t say thank you enough to the city of Chicago for taking me in and embracing me,’ Fields wrote on X. ‘Thank you to the entire Bears organization and ownership for allowing me the opportunity to be part of such a historic franchise. But most of all thank you to my all my brothers that I played with. You all were the reason I attacked each day the way I did.

‘I can’t thank you all enough for what y’all have meant to me over the last 3 years through the ups and downs. I wish each one of you nothing but success. Ready for this next chapter!’

The Steelers will soon have to make a decision on Fields’ fifth-year option. If they don’t pick it up by the May 2 deadline (or agree to an extension), Fields will become a free agent after the 2024 season. Either way, the Steelers will have to determine if Fields is, in fact, their QB of the future. The Bears will keep searching for theirs when they officially go on the clock when the NFL draft begins April 25.

The field is set. We think. (We’re pretty sure.)

From No. 1 through No. 16, our final update for the 2024 NCAA men’s tournament is locked into place with hours to go until the committee unveils the official bracket Sunday evening.

Let’s start at the top, where Tennessee’s early exit from the SEC tournament puts North Carolina on the No. 1 line with Connecticut, Purdue and Houston despite the Tar Heels’ loss on Saturday to North Carolina State.

Only the Huskies will enter the tournament on a winning streak. The Cougars lost ugly in the Big 12 tournament to Iowa State and Purdue suffered a surprising loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten. The overall resumes for each team are still good enough to fend off Tennessee and Arizona, who land on the No. 2 line. Joining the Volunteers and Wildcats as No. 2 seeds are the Cyclones and Marquette.

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Upsets over the weekend had a huge impact on the bubble picture. One at-large spot was taken away by Florida Atlantic’s loss to Temple in the American semifinals, opening up another spot for the conference for the winner of the title game between UAB and the Owls.

Another spot was filled with Oregon’s win against Colorado to take home the Pac-12. North Carolina State was not going to make the tournament without winning the ACC title.

That was costly for teams hovering on the fringes of our field. That includes Seton Hall, bumped out after losing its Big East tournament opener to St. John’s. Virginia went 23-10 in the regular season but posted just two Quad 1 wins and finished outside the top 50 in the NET rankings. The Ducks’ Pac-12 championship made St. John’s the first team out.

Two of the Power Six conferences were won by teams (Oregon and N.C. State) that were not going to get automatic berths. That basically shut the door on some deserving teams on the bubble.

Last four in

Northwestern, Florida Atlantic, Oklahoma, Texas A&M

First four out

St. John’s, Seton Hall, Virginia, Indiana State

Next four out

Providence, Pittsburgh, Villanova, Wake Forest

NCAA Tournament bids by conference breakdown

Multi-bid leagues: Big 12 (9), SEC (8), Big Ten (6), Mountain West (6), ACC (4), Pac-12 (4), Big East (3), American Athletic (2), Atlantic 10 (2), West Coast Conference (2).

Kent State men’s basketball coach Rob Senderoff is backing his player who mistakenly made a costly foul in a 62-61 loss to Akron on Saturday night.

Kent State went up 61-60 in the MAC Tournament championship game after center Cli’Ron Hornbeak made a dunk with five seconds remaining. Akron inbounded the ball and Kent State guard Julius Rollins immediately fouled Akron guard Greg Tribble in the backcourt with 4.8 seconds left.

Senderoff and other Kent State players appeared to be in disbelief after the foul.

‘He probably thought we were down one, instead of up one,’ Senderoff explained after the game.

The Golden Flashes didn’t have a foul to give and sent Tribble to the free throw line, where he knocked down both free throws to take the lead 62-61. Kent State guard Jalen Sullinger got a shot off with one second remaining, but missed what would have been the game winner.

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AUTOMATIC BIDS: Who has clinched a berth in the NCAA Tournament?

If Kent State would have held onto the lead and won, it would have secured back-to-back MAC Tournament championships and an earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Senderoff, however, said one play does not make or break a game and he took responsibility.

“As I told the team, I should have called a timeout there. I do not blame Julius,’ he said. ‘There’s 100 plays in the game and that was just one of them.”

Senderoff said Rollins is devastated over the costly mistake – ‘Right now it’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to him’ – but added that it is just a basketball game at the end of the day.

‘This is the thing I told him, I didn’t tell the whole team, I told him if this is the worst thing that’s happened to you when you’re 50 years old like I am, then you’ve lived a pretty charmed life,’ Senderoff said. ‘Tomorrow the sun will come up, it will be a little cloudy for me and for our guys, but the sun will come up tomorrow.’

An NCAA men’s basketball tournament champion won’t be decided for three more weeks, but among coaches and their various performance-incentive provisions, there is already a major winner:

North Carolina State’s Kevin Keatts, who stands to gain more than $5.5 million from his 10th-seeded team’s stunning five-wins-in-five-days run to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title that culminated in an 84-76 victory over top-seeded and No. 4-ranked North Carolina on Saturday night in Washington, D.C.

According to Keatts’ contract with N.C. State, winning the ACC tournament results in:

-An automatic two-year contract extension. This means the contract is now scheduled to run for six more years, through April 15, 2030.

-An automatic $400,000 pay increase that begins next season and stays in place for the remainder of the contract.

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-A $100,000 lump-sum bonus for the ACC tournament championship and an additional lump-sum of at least $10,000 for the team’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. (It’s $10,000 if the Wolfpack begin in the First Four or $25,000 if they win a First Four game or begin play in the round of 64. The payment will increase with each subsequent win in the event.)

The contract extension is where the math gets a little more complicated — and a lot more lucrative.

At present, Keatts’ total basic annual compensation is divided into two components: base salary and “supplemental compensation” that he receives as consideration for fundraising work and other personal appearances such as those on local TV and radio shows; his participation in the school’s shoe-and-apparel contract; and allowing the school to use his name, image and likeness for various purposes.

If Keatts were to be fired without cause — that is, for not winning enough — he would receive, as a buyout, an amount equal to the base salary remaining on the contract; he would receive none of the remaining supplemental compensation.

His base salary for this season is just under $1.5 million, and in recent years it has increased annually by a relatively modest amount. (It went up by a little more than $57,000 for this season, or 4%. Any annual increases are determined by the university’s athletics director and chancellor, subject to approval by its governing board).

His supplemental compensation for this season is $1.45 million, and it can increase annually based on team performance, such as an ACC regular season or tournament title and/or an appearance and advancement in the NCAA tournament.

So, assuming another 4% increase in base salary for next season, the two additional contract years that Saturday night’s win will give to Keatts are guaranteed to add at least $3 million to value of the agreement if he is fired without cause.

But if Keatts were to complete the full term of the deal, his pay would be $400,000 greater than it is this season – for each of the remaining six years, or $2.4 million more.   

Each November, 351 Division I men’s basketball teams start on a level playing field, hoping to cut down the nets during the Final Four in April.

One of those teams will end its journey in Phoenix, but to get there, a grueling four-month trek must take place before the NCAA selection committee chooses the field of 68 teams that will compete for the championship at State Farm Stadium.

This season, amid constant talks of expansion, the 68-team tournament field will include the automatic bid from the 32 teams that won their conference tournaments and 36 at-large selections, with some teams on the bubble having their dreams shattered at being left out.

Here is how to watch the selection show:

When is Selection Sunday 2024?

The Men’s 2024 NCAA Tournament selection show will take place on Sunday, March 17.

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What time is the Selection Sunday show?

The show will start at 6 p.m. ET, immediately after the conclusion of the Big Ten Conference tournament championship game.

What channel is Selection Sunday on?

The selection show will be broadcast exclusively on CBS.

The show can be streamed on the CBS Sports app, Fubo (free trial), and Paramount+.

Who are the hosts?

Adam Zucker will host the show, and Clark Kellogg, Jay Wright, and Seth Davis will provide analysis and breakdowns of the brackets.