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UCLA coach Ben Howland doesn’t think his team is in the NCAA Tournament just yet.

If its record alone isn’t enough, UCLA is banking on its top-40 RPI as the trump card that could get it into the NCAA Tournament next month.

Some tweaking of the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) formula, however, will alter how the NCAA Tournament selection committee views the Bruins’ tournament profile.

For the first time next month, the committee will use a weighted-RPI system that rewards teams more for road victories and penalizes them for home losses.

UCLA, which has only lost three home games this season and finished conference play 5-4 away from Pauley Pavilion, could benefit from those modifications.

“We wanted the RPI to appropriately reflect winning on the road,” committee chairman Bob Bowlsby said. “I’m sure some committee members will be using, for comparison’s sake, other computations like Sagarin or whatever.”

The more strongly the selection committee emphasizes the RPI, the more it would seem to benefit UCLA (14-9, 8-7).

The Pac-10 currently ranks No. 2 overall in the conference RPI behind the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the Bruins check in at No. 37 in the latest computer rankings for individual teams.

Yet, even though most tournament projections include the Bruins in the field right now, UCLA coach Ben Howland knows his team needs to win as many games as possible to guarantee themselves a spot on Selection Sunday.

“It’s nice of them to have us in (the tournament) right now, but we’re not in there,” he said. “That doesn’t get decided for another three weeks.”

RPI is a measure of a team’s strength of schedule based on the performance of both the team in particular and its opponents.

Though the Pac-10’s star shines brightly in the RPI, only No. 8 Arizona and No. 13 Washington can feel secure about getting a bid to the NCAA Tournament. UCLA can’t be certain that the conference will send more than three teams.

While Howland feels confident that at least four or even five teams from the Pac-10 will be selected, Bowlsby, who is in his second year as committee chairman, warned that the RPI is not the single most important factor in determining which teams will get an at-large bid to the tournament.

“The RPI serves a role, but it’s not a predictive tool,” Bowlsby said. “It’s not a sharp instrument, it’s just a blunt object.

“We’ve got all kinds of other numerical measures we can use. I don’t think we put as much emphasis on RPI as everyone else does.”

UCLA has three regular-season games remaining after tonight’s match-up with USC – a road game at Notre Dame on Sunday and two home games next week against the Oregon schools.

If the Bruins can avoid any slipups for the rest of the way, they believe they should have a good chance at earning their first NCAA Tournament bid since the 2001-2002 season.

“I’d have felt a lot better in third place if we had taken care of business against Stanford, but we’re right there,” senior Dijon Thompson said.

With reports from the Associated Press.