The Troy Trojans had plenty of opportunities to put the game away early, but couldn’t push the winning run across in a 5-3 loss to New Orleans Friday night.

Troy left 14 men on base, including the bases loaded in the eighth and 10th innings, in the two-run loss to the Privateers.

New Orleans tied the game with solo homer in the top of the eighth inning by Reese Kanter, and scored, what turned out to be the winning runs, in the top of the 13th on a line-drive double to left center by Hezekiah Randolph.

“We didn’t get very good balls off the bat a couple of times, and when we did they made good plays to knock them down,” said Troy head coach Bobby Pierce. “When you are struggling it always seems that those things go against you. One thing I am happy with is tonight we forced the guy to get us out in the strike zone, which is something we were not doing earlier.”

Troy grabbed the first lead of the game on a two-run home run in the fifth by catcher Justin Hancock.

New Orleans tied the game in the seventh on a throwing error charged to Hancock.

David Hall gave Troy a brief lead in the bottom of the seventh with a line-drive homer to left.

With the loss, Troy falls to 7-7 on the season and is in desperate need of a win to shake the recent run of bad luck.

Friday’s loss was Troy’s third in a row.

“Times like these do come,” said Pierce. “They are not any fun. But baseball is a crazy game. We have to keep battling, and get some wins. We tell our players to keep battling and they will. We will come to the ball park tomorrow looking to turn some things around.”