By the time LSU got back from the Southeastern Conference Tournament, head coach Jay Johnson said he felt he knew a lot more about his resurgent baseball team.

By time the Tigers learned their first-round opponent in the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Regional of the NCAA Tournament, he knew next to nothing about Wofford.

It’s the annual scramble to dig up any nugget of information on an unknown opponent to open the Road to Omaha, where LSU won the College World Series a year ago.

“It’s my favorite time of the year,” Johnson said of the challenge to find information. “It means you’re in the tournament.”

This year will be a much tougher road — it’s away from Alex Box Stadium, where the Tigers have advanced three times in their otherwise storied history.

And they have one regional win on the road this century, when the No. 2 seeded Tigers won the Eugene (Ore.) Regional in 2021, Paul Mainieri’s last year as coach.

North Carolina is the No. 1 seed and will play No. 4 Long Island University today. Today’s winners will play each other at 4 p.m. Saturday after the 11 a.m. elimination game between the losers.

The eventual regional winner will advance to a super regional and play the winner of the Tucson Regional hosted by Arizona.

But first things first.

LSU, which is playing in a regional for the 36th time and has won seven national championships in its 19 trips to the CWS, will be playing a Wofford team making its second regional appearance and looking for its first tournament win.

But Johnson said something else caught his eye.

While LSU (40-21) was justifiably proud of its 4-1 run through the SEC Tournament to secure a No. 2 seed in Chapel Hill, Wofford (41-18) had a taller tale.

In getting through the maze of its Southern Conference Tournament to secure the automatic bid, the Terriers played seven games in five days, winning six of them.

“So it’s a team that has a lot toughness,” Johnson said. “That’s an impressive accomplishment.”

Other than that, Johnson knew Wofford’s reputation as a small-ball, run-happy team.

“There’s a style or brand of baseball that I know they have, even though I’m not familiar with them (this year),” he said Monday moments after the 64-tournament field was announced.

His own team is being widely mentioned as a dark horse to get through the regional, even with No. 4 national seed North Carolina in the way.

He doesn’t totally disagree.

“What I like about our team is we have a mind-set, a confidence and belief that is stronger than it’s been all season,” Johnson said. “I think we have a brand of baseball now where the pitching dynamic is good and the at-bats have certainly gotten better. I feel we have an identity … and that’s what makes us tough to play.”

By the time Johnson did his due diligence on Wofford, he found a small-ball team that, yes, has stolen 144 bases this season (LSU has 38). But it’s also a team with a .340 batting average thanks to six every day starters hitting .327 or better.

Yet even that isn’t what makes the Terriers a dangerous team, maybe the worst nightmare for any heavily favored team like LSU.

That would be having one true ace on an otherwise nondescript staff, a big arm capable of shutting down any batting order.

No pitching matchups have been announced, but presumably LSU will have to beat right-hander Zac Cowan (9-2, 3.55 ERA), who got two of those Wofford wins in the conference tournament.

Cowan had 118 strikeouts against 28 walks in his 104 innings.