From all indications, the career college stat line will read 2-2-2: two minutes, two points, two rebounds. And yet the legacy of Michael Porter Jr. in Missouri basketball lore is secure.

How so, you ask? How can a kid who played all of 127 seconds have that kind of an impact? Let us count the ways. Look down the Mizzou bench: brother Jontay, Jeremiah Tilmon, Blake Harris, Kassius Robertson. How many of those talents would be in Columbia if not for Porter? Look back to the season opener against Iowa State, when Mizzou Arena was packed to the gills for the first time in years. Look at the uptick in recruiting, and listen to the buzz around the country about the program. Questions about Porter’s future are followed by speculation about how good this team can be without him.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Michael Porter Jr. isn’t coming back for another year of college basketball. Sure, he’d love to play a full season for his father and with his brother, and yes, he’d like nothing more than to take Mizzou basketball to places it’s never been. This, however, is a business decision. No doubt, Porter had the surgery when he did so he can show NBA teams he’s healthy and still a worthy top-five investment in the draft. Talk all you want about his love for Mizzou and Columbia. Backs can be tricky — just ask Tiger Woods. What happens if Porter does return, and the back goes out again? You can bleed black and gold to the bone, but if this were your son, you’d make the same decision.

I trust that Porter will be back on the bench at some point, flashing that contagious grin and being as vocal and supportive as ever. From a competitive standpoint, however, it’s time for both sides to move on. In games against Utah and Emporia State, the Tigers played like a team that was bracing for the inevitable. Sloppy turnovers. Poor shot selection. Waning energy. But at the Advocare Invitational in Orlando, Mizzou showed what’s possible. Despite what some media outlets have written, this team never was going to be known as Michael Porter Jr. and his Band of Basketball Joes. Take Porter out of the equation, and this year’s class still would have ranked 11th by at least one recruiting service. Jontay, Tilmon, Harris and Robertson would be welcome at most every Division I program in the country. They were drawn to Columbia by a megastar who also happened to be a pretty good recruiter.

There will be rough stretches, no doubt. The one thing Mizzou loses without Porter is not having a player who can take over a game, who can create a shot and score points by the boatload when the offense goes in a funk. Witness what happened against Utah and for a stretch of the second half against St. John’s and West Virginia. The good news is that the rest of the non-conference schedule isn’t particularly daunting. There is time over the next month to develop chemistry, to solidify the rotation, to settle on a point guard.

When things get tough — and fasten your seat belts when watching a team playing so many youngsters — I suggest that players and fans look across the street from Mizzou Arena in the direction of Faurot Field. In mid-October, on the same weekend the basketball team was kicking off formal practices with a rollicking public exhibition, the football Tigers were licking their wounds after a 53-28 loss at Georgia. It was their fifth consecutive defeat. Barry Odom was on the hot seat. Recruits were decommitting. The program was heading into the abyss.

Look at that team now.

The fans had pretty much given up as well, a mindset not unlike the one adopted by too many in the wake of the Porter news. (One poster on PowerMizzou went so far as to ask if there was any interest in filing a class-action suit against the athletic department, claiming it misled the public by hawking season tickets while knowing Porter was injured and would never play for the Tigers. You can’t make this stuff up!) I get it. All of college basketball has been cheated of an opportunity to watch one of the young stars in the game, and this was an especially cruel gut punch for a fan base that has been tortured too many times before. Yes, the notion that a program that has never been to the Final Four could be the seventh betting favorite to win the national championship was whimsical — the things people do with their money! — but no one in the basketball program was turning out the lights at Mizzou Arena when the Porter news came down. Least of all Cuonzo Martin.

In the early 1990s, Martin walked around the Purdue campus on knees so bad that doctors wondered whether he’d ever play college basketball. Then he beat cancer. More than once he has made it clear that he never saw this job as a one-year mission. He’s here for the long haul, to rebuild a proud program into a title contender. I expect these Tigers will take on the same mentality as their coach. I expect we’ll see the same kind of fight they exhibited in a victory over St. John’s, when they went from 16 points up to eight down to winning by eight. (A victory like that against a potential tournament team can go a long way.) And I expect we’ll see plenty of entertaining basketball from a long, athletic and deep squad. For all of these reasons, I’d like to think this talented team will continue to play in front of packed houses at Mizzou Arena. At some point, Michael Porter Jr. will be there, leading the cheers.

Where will you be?