It’s conference championship week — when college basketball teams with visions of glory pad their resumes for the NCAA tournament, and programs with dwindling dreams of dancing do whatever it takes to keep the season alive.So consider LSU coach Trent Johnson’s unenviable task of preparing the No. 20 Tigers (25-6, 13-3) for two separate teams this week and having only 24 hours to devise a game plan for their Friday opponent, Kentucky (20-12, 9-8), who advanced with a 71-58 win Thursday against Ole Miss.”This thing is hard,” Johnson said Tuesday. “Everything we’ve done in the past — whether it was right or wrong — you throw it out the window … Half of practice was Kentucky.”Johnson probably wants to just throw LSU’s past two games — both losses — out the window on the way to Tampa. “We don’t watch film after a game, whether we play good or bad,” said senior guard Garrett Temple. “It wasn’t anything they did. We just missed shots to be honest. We couldn’t knock down shots we usually make, and hopefully this break will help out with that.”Temple, an All-Southeastern Conference Defensive selection, and the Tigers will also have to find a way to stop Kentucky’s first team All-SEC duo of junior Jodie Meeks and sophomore Patrick Patterson.Meeks has been the SEC’s leading scorer throughout the season, averaging 24.7 points per game, and finished second to LSU senior guard Marcus Thornton in SEC Player of the Year voting.Patterson averages 18.4 points and 9.2 rebounds, and his 15 points and 14 rebounds helped the Wildcats advance Thursday. Production in the post like that is a big reason why the Tigers enter the SEC tournament on a two-game losing streak.LSU finished the conference season ranked No. 3 in scoring defense and rebounding defense. But the Tigers were dominated in the paint last week, giving up a 33-point, 10-rebound night to Vanderbilt sophomore center A.J. Ogilvy and allowing 16 points and 17 boards to Auburn senior forward Korvotney Barber in back-to-back games.”Defensively — us getting attacked off the dribble and our angles on post defense — there were some major breakdowns there,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to put 900 pounds on [senior center] Chris Johnson and make him different over night.”The Wildcats enter Friday’s noon tipoff with a clear objective: Win, or fail to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in 17 years. Kentucky ended its regular season on a four-game losing streak.”We’ve been reeling for a while,” Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie told reporters after Kentucky’s win Thursday. “We had a tough first half against [LSU] the first time. That’s because they made us have a tough first half. That’s what they do to people.”When the Wildcats had secured their bid to face LSU — just after 2 p.m. Thursday — Trent Johnson got to work for a tipoff less than a day away.”We’ll have a staff meeting and a serious video session,” Trent Johnson said. “We’ll be nonstop trying to get them prepared.”The showdown also serves as a rematch for arguably the best four players in the SEC: Meeks and Patterson versus LSU’s own All-SEC duo of Thornton and junior forward Tasmin Mitchell.The Tigers got the best of the Wildcats on Feb. 28 at Rupp Arena when a late 3-pointer by Mitchell clinched the SEC regular season championship for LSU.”They’ve whipped us in our own gym, and we look forward to playing the conference champion tomorrow,” Gillispie said.——Contact David Helman at [email protected]