Troy continued its hot streak last week, and is nationally ranked for the first time in more than a decade.

The Trojans (34-15 overall, 16-8 Sun Belt Conference) won two of three at home vs. first-place Louisiana over the weekend, leaving them just two games back in the league standings with two weeks remaining. Troy won 16-5 on Friday and 8-4 on Saturday before losing a 14-13 nailbiter in 10 innings on Sunday — a game that saw the Trojans score six times in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie it.

For the weekend, Troy hit .353 (36-for-102) as a team, with 38 runs scored, six home runs, eight doubles and 18 walks. The three-game series drew more than 8,000 fans to newly renovated Riddle-Pace Field.

“We’ve been building this thing into a crescendo and I think people got to see this as a national audience this week,” Troy coach Skylar Meade said. “… A lot of people following us around the country, the crowds that were here. Our work is far from done, regardless.

“The next couple of days, there’s going to be a lot of fanfare in a multitude of ways for this team. I believe, as always, the guys deserve that. They deserve people talking about them, but we have to make sure we compartmentalize that in the right way and continue to move forward.”

That fanfare indeed started Monday, as Troy checked in at No. 21 in the weekly D1Baseball.com Top 25 and No. 22 in the Baseball America poll (two other Top 25 polls will be released on Monday afternoon). It’s the first time the Trojans have been ranked nationally since 2013.

Troy hosts Alabama in a non-conference game on Tuesday, then heads to Texas State for a three-game Sun Belt series beginning on Friday. The Bobcats are 10-14 in Sun Belt play, currently 11th in the overall standings (the top 10 make the Sun Belt tournament, which begins May 21 in Montgomery).

Troy had won eight consecutive games before Sunday’s loss, but did not go quietly even then. The Trojans trailed 12-6 heading into the bottom of the ninth before Kole Myers’ 2-run single and Will Butcher’s grand slam forced extra innings.

Louisiana (34-15, 18-6) scored twice in the top of the 10th to go up 14-12, but Troy nearly pulled off another comeback in the bottom of the inning. Shane Lewis doubled home a run to make it 14-13 and moved the tying run to third, but Butcher was intentionally walked before Mikey Bello flew out to end the game.

“It was an incredible battle out here today,” Meade said. “A lot of teams would’ve let it end there in the ninth, but numerous guys contributed to get the bat to Will Butcher, who hits a grand slam. We just grinded, but it wasn’t meant to be. Louisiana is such a good team because the program answered from the last two and did it in the 10th.

“As a pitching guy, I hate that we gave up double-digit runs. We have to be better at that. But, man, tremendous fight from every single person in that dugout and each fan in those stands. While a loss stings, it will serve us going forward.”

• South Alabama missed a chance to make a major move in the Sun Belt standings, losing two of three at Appalachian State after winning the series-opener on Friday.

The Jaguars won 9-5 on Friday night, but got wrecked 10-2 and 13-1 in a Sunday doubleheader after rain washed out Saturday’s game. South Alabama is now 27-20 overall, 11-13 in Sun Belt play with two weeks remaining in the regular season.

“We didn’t dig in and grind through our bats,” South Alabama coach Mark Calvi said Sunday. “That’s typically what we’ve done, especially the last month here and we didn’t do that today.”

The Jaguars remain tied for ninth in the conference standings, with the Top 10 reaching the Sun Belt tournament. South Alabama is essentially 10th in the Sun Belt standings, as they lose the head-to-head tiebreaker to Georgia State, which is also 11-13 in conference play.

South Alabama hosts last-place Louisiana-Monroe for three games beginning Friday, then travels to first-place Louisiana to complete the regular season. A sweep of the Warhawks would go a long way toward securing a spot in Montgomery two weeks from now.