BATON ROUGE – Houston, LSU still has a problem nearly 365 days later.

The Tigers have played 58 games, won 48 of them and have been ranked No. 1 in the nation for most of this year, but June 2, 2014, sticks on the Tigers like a bad losing streak.

That was the day Houston upset No. 8 national seed LSU for the second straight day, 12-2, to eliminate the Tigers from their own NCAA Regional in Alex Box Stadium. It marked the first time in LSU baseball history that it lost a regional after winning the first two games.

The day before, Houston beat LSU, 5-4, in 11 innings after the Tigers led 4-0 through seven innings. LSU, 44-14-1 and fresh off a SEC Tournament championship, opened that NCAA Regional as expected with an 8-4 win over Southeastern Louisiana and a 5-1 win over Houston. Then, it was soon all over.

“You have to play nine innings,” said LSU junior shortstop Alex Bregman said. “We learned that the hard way.”

With a win Friday afternoon and a win Saturday night in a winners bracket game, the Tigers will be right back where they were last year — playing on Sunday for the right to host a best-of-three Super Regional next week with Omaha, Nebraska, and the College World Series at stake. And that could be against — yep — Houston (42-18) if the Cougars can win the NCAA Regional they will be hosting this weekend against Rice (35-20), UL Lafayette (39-21) and Houston Baptist (28-25).

LSU, 48-10 and the national No. 2 seed this year with more offense but less pitching than last season, opens NCAA Regional play at 3 p.m. Friday at Alex Box Stadium against No. 4 regional seed Lehigh (25-29). A win will advance LSU to an 8 p.m. game Saturday against the winner from Friday’s 7 p.m. game between No. 3 seed Tulane (34-23) and No. 2 seed North Carolina-Wilmington (39-16).

Bregman is one of seven position players who started that 12-2 loss to Houston and will start Friday’s game. The other six are sophomore left fielder Jake Fraley, junior center fielder Andrew Stevenson, junior right fielder Mark Laird, junior first baseman Chris Chinea, senior catcher Kade Scivicque and senior third baseman Conner Hale. Two other returnees who will start Friday — senior second baseman Jared Foster and senior designated hitter Chris Sciambra — pinch-hit in that loss.

LSU beat Houston, 4-2, at the Houston College Classic in Minute Maid Park on March 6, but that did little to soothe the wound of last June’s swoon.

“That one really hurt. We felt like we were going to Omaha, but we’re a better team now,” Bregman said.

“We’re going into this regional knowing it could be our last game,” Foster said. “And last year, we got upset in the regional. We don’t want to do that this year. We learned from that because we have a lot of the same guys on this team. We know how that feels, and we’re not going to take it lightly.”

Three pitchers who threw in that 12-2 Houston loss and allowed eight runs on four hits and four walks — Parker Bugg, Alden Cartwright and Hunter Devall — may pitch Friday as coach Paul Mainieri said he might use several pitchers with regular starters Alex Lange (10-0, 2.11 ERA) and Jared Poche (7-1, 3.35 ERA) not slated to start until Saturday and Sunday.

Lange is a freshman and did not play against Houston last year, but he knows well how his teammates feel about it.

“It definitely has been a long wait for them,” he said. “I know for all the guys that were on the team last year, losing in the regional leaves them with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. It was just a rough, abrupt way to end the season. We are trying to make sure that does not happen this year. We have a great team, and we want to keep playing.”

That starts with Lehigh.

“We can’t really look ahead,” Lange said, “because if we do look ahead, something like last year will happen.”

Better pitching at the end of games will also avoid the bad ending of a year ago — something not lost on Mainieri.

“We have the best offensive team, maybe in the country,” he said. “But you can’t win with just offense. We’re going to have to pitch to win. There’s no question about that. Now, our offense will be an asset for us. If we have to win a 6-5 game or a 7-6 game or something like that, we have the offense to do it. Ultimately, though, we are going to have to get the other team out, especially at the end of the ballgame.”

LSU had trouble with that against Houston last year as the Cougars scored four in the eighth to tie and one in the 11th to beat the Tigers and force a winner-take-all title contest that pitching-stripped LSU lost, 12-2. LSU has struggled to close out games at times this year.

“That’s something we are going to have to focus on as we move to this point of our season,” Mainieri said.

“The intensity is going to be high because for a lot of us,” Foster said, “this is it.”