It’s usually refreshing the way baseball is different.

Coaches routinely throw players under the bus, so to speak, without consequence or second thought.

Try that as a head football coach sometime.

Baseball just has different quirks.

So it was probably harmless the way several LSU players bore no apparent shame in mentally fast-forwarding through this week’s Baton Rouge regional and sneak-peeking ahead to a potential super regional matchup with Houston.

It certainly caught the Tigers’ collective eye when the NCAA tournament pairings were announced.

Houston, of course, pulled off a stunner in last year’s Baton Rouge regional. The Tigers were on cruise control, six outs away from clinching the regional in straight sets, holding a four-run lead. Then the Cougars rallied for four runs to tie it in the eighth and won it in the 11th to force a deciding game the next day, one that LSU chose not to show up for (UH 12, LSU 2).

So the Tigers are justifiably miffed, apparently still carrying a grudge.

Perhaps they’re still waiting on a Houston apology.

But wait a minute. Didn’t they take care of that oversight on March 4?

I’m pretty sure I was there in Houston on a chilly Friday night at the Astros’ Minute Maid Park when the Tigers prevailed 4-2 over Houston.

Is it legal to play the revenge card twice? In one season?

Perhaps.

Or maybe the regular season doesn’t count when dealing with such delicate matters.

Maybe an eye-for-an-eye retribution can only be carried out in the postseason.

And maybe that’s as it should be, particularly with the Tigers.

There’s been a lot of national gushing and fawning over this LSU baseball team in the last six weeks, to the point it was a real surprise that the Tigers weren’t the No. 1 national seed (UCLA was).

You heard it again and again Monday, more accusations that LSU is surely the top overall program in the nation, but also this year the most complete team.

Who could argue?

But the truth is has happened so far means nothing. LSU baseball needs to get its postseason mojo back.

It has been quietly slipping since that last dominant run to the 2009 national championship.

True, it’s all relative. But it’s also the standard set for this program. It’s what they sign up for.

Head coach Paul Mainieri admits it at the start of every year — for LSU to call a season a success, it’s the College World Series or bust … and it’s best not to come back from Omaha empty-handed.

LSU has been back to Omaha only once since winning that sixth national championship in 2009, and the Tigers are still waiting on their first victory in the new TD Ameritrade Park, home of the CWS.

Most of it, however, has happened at home, right there in the once invincible Alex Box Stadium, which is all the more alarming.

The blunder against Houston last year was the first time LSU had ever lost a regional after winning the first two games.

Three years ago, the Tigers bore witness to one of the sport’s great Cinderella stories when plucky, little Stony Brook waltzed into The Box and took two of three in a super regional, the first one of those LSU lost at home.

LSU was only the No. 8 national seed last year and merely the No. 7 for the Stony Brook feel-good story.

This year the Tigers are No. 2 and, of course, it’s only important that you’re one of the eight, with all the home privileges that come with it.

Or is a national seed even that important?

It certainly ain’t what it used to be.

The super regional format began in 1999, and for most of the years since you could pretty much count on the usual suspects showing up in Omaha.

But last year only two of the eight national seeds made it to Omaha.

The year before that it was only three of the eight, continuing a trend that began in 2012 when only half made it.

“We know we’re a better team than that this year,” said LSU star shortstop Alex Bregman.

No doubt. Overall, yes. Body of work, no question.

But this year’s LSU team isn’t any hotter going into the tournament than last year’s was.

Fat lot of good it did it. It only took one bad inning against Houston to derail the entire season.

“We learned a lesson there,” Bregman said.

To his credit, Bregman then quickly turned his attention to the more immediate task of opening the regional Friday against, I believe, Lehigh.

No harm done.

But as LSU has learned, much to its chagrin, there are no guarantees.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU

athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com

(Associated Press)

Bill Feig