With this injury, however, who knows? It could galvanize his wishes to play one more year with his brother, Jontay, and one more year for his father, Michael Sr. Nothing is more important than family to this family, after all. The NBA would still be there in another year, but the opportunity to play in Columbia would be gone forever.

And there's this. This weekend, Porter posted on Instagram: "whoever said it was going to take 3-4 months to recover lied."

This might mean nothing ... or it could mean everything to Porter and Tiger fans. Assuming, that is, he was talking about a shorter recovery time, not a longer one.

Regardless, the news of Porter's apparent season-ending surgery was a body blow to all things Black and Gold. What did we do to deserve this?

It was a week of the worst of times, to be sure, but it was also a week for some of the best of times for Missouri.

On the football field, the Tigers continued to do what we thought was impossible less than two months ago.

Win.

It's now six straight and counting for the Tigers, who turned around a 1-5 disaster to start the season to finish at 7-5 and earn a bowl invitation, maybe to the Liberty to see our other friends from Kansas, the purple ones.

How in the name of Woody Widenhofer did this happen? The Tigers, after all, weren't just losing, they were losing in embarrassing, stadium-emptying fashion.

Well, they didn't exactly beat Auburn and Alabama in their final six games. The Tigers beat Idaho and Connecticut. They beat Vanderbilt. And they beat three other SEC teams who fired their head coaches mid-season --- two right after they'd lost to the Tigers, one (Arkansas' Bret Bielema) before he even reached the locker room after the game.

Having said that, this is still one of the best comebacks since Lazarus.

What Barry Odom and his staff have done is remarkable. Odom obviously made the right moves and pushed the right buttons, because the Tigers weren't just beating bad teams, they were beating bad teams badly --- a total score of 308-138.

Since the SEC was formed in a smoky backroom in 1932, the Tigers are the first team in conference history to win their final six games after starting 1-5; they're the first to finish 4-4 in conference play after starting 0-4; and Drew Lock set both school and conference records with his single-season total of 41 touchdown passes.

It would have been easy for Odom to lose this team and for the Tigers to be playing like some of their opponents down the stretch, namely Florida and Tennessee. Both of those teams tuned-out both the message and the messenger and quit. Period. But these Tigers didn't --- they are the ones who should ultimately get the credit.

And that speaks volumes about the character on these young men.

That was only part of the good news from the past week. The No. 23 Missouri women beat No. 21 California on Saturday to win that program's first true road game against a ranked opponent in nearly 35 years. 35 years!

Then, there were the Porter-less Missouri men.

This 2017 recruiting class under first-year coach Cuonzo Martin has a lot more to it than just Porter. While he obviously made a very good class a spectacular one, the fact remains it's still very good. You still have guys like Jontay Porter --- who might prosper even more since he's not playing in his brother's long shadow --- and Jeremiah Tilman and transfer Kassius Robertson.

Missouri went to the land of Mickey and Goofy and went 2-1 to finish second in the Advocare Invitational in Orlando. The Tigers routed Long Beach State and beat St. John's --- rallying from an eight-point deficit in the second half after blowing a 16-point lead in the first --- before meeting No. 23 West Virginia.

Sunday night's championship game turned out to be a disappointment as big as Goofy's shoes, as Missouri couldn't hold a 16-point second-half lead in an 83-79 loss. The Tigers withered late under the Mountaineers' pressure, but this a young team still learning how to play together.

The Tigers still settle for more 3-pointers than most fans would like, a lot more of them. But watch other teams, it's what the game has become.

Thank you, Stephen Curry.

Would the Tigers had beaten the Mountaineers with Michael Porter? Probably. Would they have won at Utah with him? Probably not.

Despite this loss, the trip to Florida had a lot more positives than negatives, to be sure. Meaning that overall, it was a good finish to an otherwise really bad week at Mizzou.

After the last few years, Tiger fans will take it.

But they'd rather take something that lasts longer than 100 seconds.

Mizzou's Week in Review: It was

best of times and absolute worst