Don’t tell LSU coach Trent Johnson the Southeastern Conference is down.The league is in the throes of what is widely considered a down year by college basketball prognosticators.Its one team ranked in the top 25 — Johnson’s LSU squad — is the lowest ranked team among BCS conferences leaders.ESPN college basketball analyst Joe Lunardi listed only three SEC schools in his most recent Bracketology report — LSU, Tennessee and South Carolina — released Monday.But Johnson doesn’t necessarily agree with the predictions about his new conference. “My feeling is five [teams] easy,” he said during Monday’s SEC coaches’ teleconference. “Everybody talks about the bubble, but nobody talks about Auburn. They handled us as well as anybody has all year long. You look at what Arkansas did to teams like Texas and Oklahoma early on — how can you not have five teams?”The SEC’s perceived weakness could be reason for LSU’s sizeable drop in this week’s polls, despite Johnson’s objections.The latest batch of college basketball rankings, released Monday, have the Tigers ranked at No. 16 in the USA Today Top 25 and No. 20 in the AP Top 25, just two days after the Tiger’s second-consecutive conference loss, 69-53, to Auburn.The Tigers (25-6, 13-3) dropped their last two games of conference play after clinching the SEC regular season championship with a 13-game conference win streak and a 73-70 win at Kentucky on Feb. 28.”We were winning games, but it wasn’t like we were blowing anyone out,” Johnson said. “You need to give credit to Vanderbilt and give credit to Auburn. Both of those teams were playing better at this time of the year than we were.”Johnson’s team holds the SEC Western division No. 1 seed entering Thursday’s SEC tournament despite the bad stretch. The Tigers’ reward for locking up the division and conference titles is a game against either Kentucky or Ole Miss on Friday. Both of LSU’s possible opponents nearly upended the Tigers in regular season matchups.”It’s a new season, and we’re looking forward to the SEC tournament,” Johnson said. “We’ve had two days off, and we’ll start practice [today] around 3 p.m., and we’ll have three days of hard practice.” JOHNSON GETS EARLY TWO COMMITMENTSProvine High School’s Jalen Courtney, a 6-foot-7-inch, 210-pound power forward, became Johnson’s first member of LSU’s class of 2010 when the Jackson, Miss. native verbally committed on Saturday. Courtney helped Provine to the Mississippi Class 5A state championship game last weekend. The Scout.com three-star prospect posted 22 points and 14 boards in a losing effort.Johnson also began work on his 2011 class Monday with the commitment of Pickering High School guard John Isaac. At 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds, Isaac averaged 18.5 points, 11.5 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 2 blocks and 2 steals per game in his sophomore season of high school.—-Contact David Helman at [email protected]