With the final seconds in the season ticking down Friday night, Vicksburg’s Kirk Parker sent a long pass up the floor for a potential game-tying 3-pointer.

The ball was off the mark and took one long, high hop out of bounds with a tenth of a second left to not only deny the Gators a buzzer-beater, but the buzzer as well.

Officials called the game — by rule, no shot can be taken with less than three-tenths left on the clock — and the Gators’ season came to an end with a disappointing, anticlimactic 57-54 loss to Pearl in the third-place game of the Division 4-5A Tournament.

Vicksburg, which reached the Class 5A championship game last season, finished this one with a 13-14 record. It lost 11 of its last 13 games, including two on its home floor in the division tournament.

“That’s a tough pill to swallow. We did a lot of things right, and the kids gave the effort. They really fought hard,” Vicksburg coach Dellie C. Robinson said. “We were right there, but we made some bad plays at the end that hurt us. Pearl has a veteran team, but certainly this was a game we should have had. Especially on our home floor.”

Christopher Cooper scored 17 points and Brandon Boston added 12 for Pearl (22-7), which advanced to face the Division 1-5A runner-up in the Class 5A state tournament next week.

Kirk Parker and K.J. Murphy scored 18 points apiece for Vicksburg, which didn’t go down without a fight Friday night.

The Gators trailed 55-44 when senior point guard Tyler Smith hit a 3-pointer with 2:50 left. Murphy hit two more in the span of less than a minute to cut a seemingly insurmountable deficit down to a single possession, 56-53, with 1:51 remaining.

The last 111 seconds of the Gators’ season, however, was filled with missed opportunities and heartbreak.

After Murphy stole the inbounds pass following his second 3-pointer, Parker was fouled down low and missed two free throws.

The Gators got the ball back with a minute left, but Smith missed a 3-pointer and then Murphy missed two shots in the lane.

Smith split two free throws with 12.4 seconds left and the Gators got a steal and a chance to tie. Antonio Moore, though, missed a shot in the lane.

Cooper hit one of two free throws with 3.6 seconds remaining to push Pearl’s lead to 57-54, but it gave the Gators one last chance.

Following a timeout, Parker got the ball near midcourt and sent a long bounce pass toward the left corner. It was supposed to find either Murphy or Smith for a 3-pointer at the buzzer, but never got there. It bounded harmlessly out of bounds, the officials waved off the final tenth of a second, and the teams lined up for their postgame handshake.

“When we got the ball, we couldn’t get it to go our way. We couldn’t get the last shot,” said Smith, who finished with nine points. “At the end they played us differently than the play we called. We had to go to a second option and it just didn’t work out.”

In the boys’ championship game, Callaway routed Lanier 87-55.

(G) Lanier 75, Vicksburg 59

Ever since their post-holiday skid began, the Vicksburg Missy Gators kept hoping everything would click back into place for at least one night.

It never did.

Lanier jumped out to an 18-point halftime lead and kept the Missy Gators at arm’s length the rest of the way to win the third-place game in the girls’ Division 4-5A Tournament.

Vicksburg (10-17) finished the season with 13 consecutive losses. It did not win a game in 2015. Its last victory came against Hillcrest Christian in the Northwest Rankin Holiday Tournament on Dec. 29.

“I think they’ve been through enough this year, so to close it out and hopefully start over will be good,” Vicksburg coach Barbara Hartzog said. “We had good spurts. We just couldn’t put it all together, and all our players never showed up on the same night.”

That included Friday, when backups Maya Clay and Kerricka McRunnels scored 12 points apiece but no starter scored more than seven.

Point guard Keiyana Gaskin finished with seven points and seven rebounds.

Forward Karry Callahan, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, picked up two fouls less than a minute into the game and spent most of the first half on the bench while Lanier built its big lead.

“Keiyana stepped up and showed a lot of heart, but the game plan was totally thrown out the window by that time,” Hartzog said.

The Missy Gators made one last push in the fourth quarter, using an 8-0 run to get as close as 12 points with just under two minutes left.

Lanier’s Brittany Rose hit a layup, however, and a Vicksburg turnover led to a basket by Destiny Welch that ended any thoughts of a miracle comeback.

Rose led all scorers with 25 points, while Welch added 15.

In the girls’ championship game, Callaway beat Pearl 35-25.