There was the obligatory three-hour rain delay, of course — most of it, curiously, under sunny skies.

But yet another late-late-late night in Alex Box Stadium — LSU apparently knows no other way — ended with a 12-5 victory over West Virginia just before Sunday turning into Monday.

You know what that means — Omaha, the Tigers’ preferred summer home, Alex Box North, Charles Schwab Field, for the College World Series.

This will be LSU’s 20th trip, all in the last 40 years.

So of course you had the customary victory-lap sendoff around Skip Bertman Field, the Tigers circling and leaping to exchange high-five with fans, the vast majority of whom stuck around well past their bedtime after applying more and more sun screen during the weather delay.

Everybody knows that drill by now.

But what was encouraging was what was noticeably absent from the celebration.

Namely, while the Tigers were enthusiastically spraying each other down with bottles of some  liquid of undetermined proof, there was no dogpile.

The Tigers have been yay and nay over the years on the dogpile issue before going to Omaha. Never mind that it risks ending up at college baseball’s ultimate destination minus a key arm or hamstring for the big stage.

Kids don’t think about that in the heat of a moment.

But the lack of a dogpile this time was a good sign.

“Don’t take these nights for granted,” head coach Jerry Johnson said with a straight face, fully aware those loving fans mostly do, expecting nothing less than Omaha every year.

Oh, for sure, the scene was far more festive than the giant sigh of relief that The Box exhaled last week while avoiding an unfathomable Stony Brook moment to bounce back to beat little Arkansas-Little Rock in the regional final.

Just saying no to the dogpile, however, suggested that these Tigers expected to get to Omaha all along, planned every day since the fall with the CWS in mind. Mainly it said they would not get overly excited over just getting there, something that 19 LSU teams before it have done, all in the last 39 years.

“We wanted to punch our ticket to Omaha,” first baseman Jared Jones said. “And we did that.”

He paused for a brief moment.

“The job’s not finished. We’ve got a lot more work ahead of us.”

Translation: Let the upstarts celebrate the send-off. LSU is baseball royalty and doesn’t play that game.

Jones, for instance, could have left after last season for the draft, but he came back not for what happened Monday night, but what is still ahead.

“I can’t wait to go chase a national championship with them,” Johnson said. “They are worthy.”

There are no guarantees. The No. 1 overall seed Vanderbilt and No. 2 Texas (both worthy of the seeding) didn’t even make it out of regionals.

Still, there’s no reason this LSU team can’t really make some noise, even add an eighth national championship to that famed “Intimidator” billboard they passed under in rightfield during the victory lap.

They got by West Virginia with relatively average overall performances from their two mound aces, Kade Anderson and Anthony Eyanson.

That 1-2 mound punch will be fine — they’re still the best thing the Tigers will have going for them in Omaha.

Meanwhile the Tigers’ bats came alive for 28 runs in two games.

Go ahead, tell me that they needed 17 walks and eight hit batters — 25 gift-wrapped bases in two games  — to do all that damage.

They took full advantage, however, as they did when three West Virginia errors in the pivotal 6-run seventh inning opened the floodgates and put the clinching game away.

Newsflash: That’s what good teams do.

They are opportunistic. make you pay for pitching mistakes, whether it be right down the middle or just a bit outside.

And you still need, as Berman himself used to say, “timely hitting.”

“There were so many key at-bats in that deal tonight,” Johnson said. “It would be a game that you would want to put on a tape and show future teams — like, this is how we play baseball at LSU.”

What it showed was the “clutch” gene at just right time of the season, uh, postseason, that is.

Both games, it seemed, every time West Virginia — a quality team — made a move, got the crowd a little anxious, the Tigers had the answer, sometimes in triplicate.

“I take a lot of pride in we play our best when it matters the most,” Johnson said. “It really shined tonight. I didn’t need to motivate them.”

They can save the dogpiling for Omaha where such foolishness  belongs.