It came so easily. Just nine months removed from an already fired coach telling a television audience exactly where they could shove it after a meaningless opening round conference tournament win in front of a few hundred fans, Missouri basketball was back.

Cuonzo Martin got hired, Lorenzo Romar got fired and Michael Porter Jr. came home and brought his brother and the rest of a top five recruiting class. Even though the ballyhooed prep star barely played in college, the momentum of last spring carried Missouri fans throughout an entire calendar year. The Tigers made it back to the NCAA Tournament and the rebuild from 27-68 that should have taken years was done in just a few weeks.

Except it wasn’t.

Everyone knew Michael Porter Jr. would be a one-year experience. No one knew the impact Kassius Robertson would have in his single season and the hole he would leave. No one knew Jontay Porter would be felled by a cruel knee injury in a preseason scrimmage preventing him from building on a stellar freshman year. No one knew that the only remnant of the renaissance of Missouri basketball that would be part of the aftermath was Jeremiah Tilmon.

But here sit the Tigers, now 3-3 after a 79-77 loss to Temple in which they shot 52% from the floor, 58% from three point range and took 12 more free throws than the Owls, but turned the ball over 15 times and attempted 14 fewer field goals than their opponent. In year two, Cuonzo Martin is staring straight at a rebuild that’s just in its opening stages.

Missouri went all in on 2017-18. The payoff wasn’t what the Tigers had hoped, but hope was exactly what last year was about. It gave hope back to a fanbase that had lost it, returned promise and pride to a program that had very little of either in its recent past.

But it also set a precedent that simply wasn’t going to be matched. Not immediately anyway.

To be fair, Jontay Porter’s injury is a big part of this. Even with Porter, it’s hard to see this Missouri team having enough to make its way to the NCAA Tournament in a Southeastern Conference that’s as good as it’s been in a long time. But without him, it’s not even something you can dream about.

And so in Martin’s second season, he’s got a team that is probably right about where it should be two years removed from complete destruction. Last year was fun, but it was never sustainable. It was set of jumper cables when Missouri basketball needed a new engine.

Martin is now shepherding a roster that has just two upperclassmen playing significant minutes. He is starting a sophomore transfer who looks like the team’s leading scorer, a sophomore big man who is either fantastic or invisible—“Now, my fingers are crossed to see it again,” Martin said of Tilmon’s double-double on Tuesday—and a freshman who sat out all of last year with an injury. He has a freshman backup point guard who appears to believe his best chance to complete a pass to a teammate is to divert his vision completely the opposite direction at all times. When asked about working on Xavier Pinson’s penchant for the no-look pass, Martin just laughs.

“Yes,” Martin finally said. “The bottom line is Mizzou’s got to get out of here with a W. It’s the most important thing.”

Martin isn’t new to this. He’s been a head coach for more than a decade. He knows what he has. And what he has is a team that he hopes will get better throughout the season, that will be better next year for having gone through this one.

Jordan Geist and Kevin Puryear were part of the lean years at Mizzou. So they’ve been through this. They may not have expected to be back here so quickly, but now they’re the ones charged with trying to lead the Tigers back out of the desert.

“We got a lot of young guys who are learning a lot so I’ve got to keep leading,” Geist said. “I’ve got to be good at all times. I had four turnovers…Cut down on some of my turnovers, we’re in that game, maybe got a shot go into overtime or something. I’ve got to be better.”

It was Geist desperately trying to shoot the Tigers back into it in the closing minutes, largely because no one else seemed to want to seize the moment. He made two three-pointers, but missed a runner in the lane and couldn’t bring Mizzou all the way back from the double-digit hole it had dug itself.

“I thought he made two tough shots,” Martin said.

But it wasn’t enough. So rather than finishing their careers with a flourish, delivering Missouri its first NCAA Tournament win since 2010, Geist and Puryear are trying to help Martin develop a bunch of young guys so that goal can be reached after they leave and win as many games as they can in the process.

“The good thing about the young guys we have is that they work so hard and they’re willing to listen. I think with experience they’ll get better,” Puryear said. “I think the best thing me and Jordan can do as senior leaders is just to be there for them, help them when they need to be helped and just continue to be a good example for them.”

Puryear talked about having an opportunity against UCF this Sunday. He talked about a team that will get better throughout the season. Even if those goals are met, though, this is a Tiger team that’s going to require a lot of patience. And the head coach knows it.

“They’re lessons, though painful, you’ve got to learn from it,” Martin said. “It’s part of your job."