Scotty Pippen Jr. scored 23 points, but Vanderbilt's season ended as it fell 69-63 to Florida in the second round of the Southeastern Conference tournament at Bridgestone Arena on Thursday afternoon.

D.J. Harvey and Trey Thomas both scored a dozen for Vanderbilt (9-16).

Florida's Tre Mann played 32 minutes, scored 22 points, dished out six assists and pulled seven rebounds for the Gators (14-8).

The Commodores led for just 3:54, but made it a game down the stretch. After trailing by 12 at half, Pippen's two free throws with 7:56 left put the Gators up, 57-56, but that was Vandy's last lead.

"We knew it was going to come down to a couple of plays at the end," Mann said.

It did, and Mann had a big hand in that.

With the Gators leading by one, Mann picked up an offensive rebound with 1:09 left and then canned an open 19-footer 16 seconds later.

Vandy's Pippen drove the baseline and found a wide-open Thomas for a 3, but Thomas mis-fired and the Gators rebounded.

Vandy fouled Mann with 28 seconds left and he hit a free throw to make it 67-63.

After Pippen missed a jumper, Harvey couldn't corral a loose ball in a scramble and the ball went out of bounds with possession going to Florida with 15.3 seconds left.

Thomas fouled Tyree Appleby, who hit a pair of foul shots with 12.8 seconds left to extend the lead to six.

Vanderbilt trailed by 12 at half, but back-to-back 3s by Pippen and Harvey to open the second half cut the lead to six.

The Gators jumped back out by 10 on a Noah Locke jumper with 10:41 left, but after a Pippen lay-up, Thomas hit back with three quick 3s in a 65-second span to cut the lead to 55-54 with 8:39 to play.

Florida got some separation in a closely-contested first half when Locke hit back-to-back, wide-open 3s with 52 and 36 seconds left in the first half, making for a 34-22 lead at the break.

Locke had 11 in the first half for the Gators, who shot 54% from the field in the period.

The week leading into the tournament showed how important the sophomore is to Vanderbilt. Pippen poured in a career-high 36 points, missing just four shots between the field and the foul line in a 14-point win. The next game, Pippen had seven points, one assist and six turnovers as the Commodores fell at Ole Miss by 10.

On Thursday, it was a tale of two halves.

In the first half, Pippen had seven points but more importantly, four turnovers to no assists. Unsurprisingly, Vandy trailed by a dozen at the break.

In the second half, Pippen opened the scoring with a 3, his first of the day. That was a harbinger of what was coming: Pippen, though going just 4-of-13 from the floor, hit all seven of his free throws. He didn't come off the floor in the period and finished the half with 16.

"Disappointed. Our goal was to come in here and really do something special. I thought our guys fought all the way and had some opportunities. We had some shots to give ourselves a chance and competed extremely hard and got defensive stops. All the things you need to do to win the game, just have to shoot a little bit better percentage. I think if we got a couple of more stops here and there, it could have been a different story but I have no problem with the effort and how our guys competed."

"We want to become a tournament team. I think we are a step off from that. We were playing our best basketball at the right time and we got better. I think our guys have improved and understand what we want. The guys have another year under their belt and are going to have more confidence in what they are able to accomplish together."

Florida coach Mike White said his team focused on limiting Vanderbilt's attempts from 3. The Gators probably didn't do that as well as they liked--the 'Dores got off 31 attempts-but Vandy hit just nine of them (29.0 percent) in what was probably the difference in the game.

However, that's three fewer than Vanderbilt launched on Wednesday in a win over Texas A&M.

White said the Commodores missed some open looks, which was certainly true. How much that had to do with Vanderbilt playing two games in 21 hours is hard to say.

Here's how the 'Dores shot from 3 in their four SEC wins this year:

South Carolina: 13-33 (39.4%)

Mississippi State: 13-30 (43.3%)

Ole Miss: 11-23 (47.8%)

Texas A&M: 12-34 (35.3%)

Vanderbilt had its highest KenPom rating of the season (90) heading into Thursday’s game. The ‘Dores were ranked 126th to start the season and dropped as low as 144 heading into the first Kentucky game on Jan. 5.

The Commodores went 12-for-12 from the foul line.