BATON ROUGE — Thus far this LSU baseball team hasn’t had to resort to gimmicks like the Rally ’Possum, which a year ago at this time had become an officially licensed best seller in the conveniently located gift shops of Alex Box Stadium, but in the end could not get the Tigers to Omaha.

So that marsupial — nature snobs delighted in pointing out to sports writers that opossums aren’t rodents like the common nutria — was actually a failure, no matter how much fun it was in stereotyping the state.

Fair or not, that’s the way LSU baseball teams are judged.

Omaha or bust.

“When you come to LSU, you know what you’re getting into,” head coach Paul Mainieri said. “The expectations are through the roof. 

“If you’re afraid of those expectations, you ought not to come to LSU, because it’ll suffocate you.”

This LSU team that opens the Baton Rouge Regional today should be able to handle it.

It should get through this regional. It should handle whichever team emerges from Southern Mississippi’s regional for next week’s super regional and return to Omaha.

Then you take your chances.

True, there are no guarantees.

Baseball is funny sport, quirky enough that there’s no such thing, really, as a true upset.

Baseball just kind of happens, routinely.

But the Tigers surely don’t have any excuses.

It took a little while — there were plenty of midweek frustrations to annoy the fandom along the way — before the chemistry kicked in.

Still, at this point, this may be the complete and best positioned LSU team since Mainieri’s 2009 national championship team.

LSU had a lot going for it even before the NCAA selection committee went into gift-wrapping mode and sent the Tigers a party favor.

This regional field is viewed by some as the weakest in the land, which probably isn’t true but not far from it.

The No. 2 seed, Southeastern Louisiana, was one of the few in-state teams the Tigers managed to beat in the midweek while still finding their way.

The Nos. 3 and 4 seeds, Rice and Texas Southern, wouldn’t be anywhere near the NCAA tournament without automatic bids for winning their conference tournaments.

Today’s LSU opponent, TSU, is the weakest team in the entire field if you go by the No. 266 Ratings Percentage Index.

Frankly, the trios convening at No. 1 national seed Oregon State and No. 3 seed Florida don’t seem much tougher.

Maybe it’s the reward for earning a top-four national seed, even if it hasn’t meant much in the past.

For all the twists and turns along the way, the Tigers are on an 11-game winning streak and fresh off a dominating run through the SEC tournament.

It’s more of a mystery how this team could struggle early than why it looks so promising at just the right time.

Mainly, it’s a veteran team that’s been here before, yet with key contributions from a few freshmen — center fielder Zach Watson and third baseman Josh Smith might be the two best defensive players on the field, and Eric Walker turned the seemingly annual search for a No. 3 starting pitcher into a non-event from Day 1.

It has four players back who could have easily left after being drafted last season. And if power hitter Greg Deichmann (Golden Spikes Award semifinalist), team leader Kramer Robertson, Jared Poché (soon to be the program’s all-time pitching wins leader) and second baseman -Cole Freeman (probably the real glue of the team) weren’t all here, we’re not having this discussion.

Instead, you’ve got a team that is not only peaking at the right time, it’s where it should have been all along.

They’re comfortable. This is the way they expected to play all season.

Like the best LSU teams of lore, it hits throughout the lineup with an uncanny knack for the timely hit, when a crooked number is liable to pop out of the most unlikely spot of the order no matter the situation.

There’s not much real power beyond Deichmann’s 19 home runs, although Robertson has lately gotten it into his head that he’s Albert Pujols.

But that’s OK.

Long ball-dependent teams die quick deaths when they get to the canyon that is Omaha’s TD Ameritrade Stadium.

I don’t know if its the best defensive team Mainieri has had — the 2009 team is tough to top — but it’s in the discussion.

There’s speed. During the SEC tournament it looked like a 4×100-meter relay team in the outfield, and any ball the Tigers’ bats put in a gap suddenly has triple potential.

Pitching? No problem.

Alex Lange, Poché and Walker are as reliable as they come, and if Mainieri did nothing else this year, he finally developed a bullpen.

Most of the midweek autopsies pointed at the inability of relievers to throw strikes — mostly by pitchers who were weeding themselves out for the postseason.

Now the Tigers are poised for a really special run.