There would seem to be an inherent risk in bringing a transfer student into a basketball program knowing he can play for just one season. To do it, a team has to tie up a scholarship for two years in exchange for just one year of productivity. By the time the player has made the transition, he's gone, having taken playing time away from players who will be back in the process for the long term. And then there's the issue of how well he fits in with his teammates since his stay is so brief.

That's the challenge Southern Illinois Carbondale faces this season with Tony Freeman, who played three seasons at Iowa before coming to SIUC with just one year of eligibility remaining. Freeman, a 6-1 guard who can both handle the ball and score, is already projected to be one of the top players in the Missouri Valley Conference without ever having played a minute. But when the season is over, he's gone.

To that, SIUC coach Chris Lowery thinks back to the 2001-02 season, when SIUC got to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1995 and started a run of six consecutive NCAA appearances. He thinks of Rolan Roberts.

"He was a one and done," Lowery said of the 6-6 center who transferred to SIUC from Virginia Tech, "but as coach (Bruce) Weber said, '(That

season) got jobs for everybody.' He was the guy who changed our mentality and changed us from a finesse-offense team to a tough and smashmouth defense and he didn't even know it. He changed how we coached, he changed how we guarded because of the things he could do defensively. Having Tony is a similar situation."

The arrival of Freeman, for as brief as it may be, is one of the reasons SIUC is picked to finish fourth in the Valley after last season's uncharacteristically messy 13-18 overall record and 8-10 mark in the Valley. The Salukis finished the season 3-7, losing in the first round of the Valley tournament.

"We're very young, we've got very talented guys," Lowery said. "Now, you've got a guy who's been through the wars. If he buys in, he can do a good job leading our program and that's what he's done so far."

"He is," sophomore guard Kevin Dillard said, "our leader."

Freeman staked out that position last season, which he watched from the bench after his transfer. In his three seasons with Iowa, his scoring numbers had consistently gone up: from 3.4 to 7.5 to 13.8 points a game. In his junior season, he was a third-team All-Big Ten selection by the league's coaches and an honorable mention selection by the league's media. After the Hawkeyes went 25-8 before losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in his freshman season, they dropped to 17-14 and then 13-19, and Freeman was looking to go out a winner.

"It was basically a no-brainer," Freeman said. "They win and I wasn't winning. Coach told me he was going to coach me like I was playing all year (last season), and that's what he did."

"The significant thing about him," Lowery said, "is he came in as Iowa's leading scorer but he's never addressed himself to the fans or anyone in our program as that. He's Tony Freeman, a player from Southern Illinois now. He's never acted like, 'I'm from a BCS league, I'm going to come in there and rip that league up and be out of there in a year.' What's consistent about him is he's been a tremendous person. He wants to win. He embraces our program. He wants to really help our program get back to where it was."

But last season was, admittedly, tough to watch.

"As a player, you know what you can do and how you can go out and help and obviously you can't do anything," Freeman said. "That's where the frustration set in. I knew I had to have a patient mindset and be really humble because I knew I was going to sit out the whole year and it was going to be tough. I'm ready to go this year."

"He did all the hard stuff that we did last year and he didn't get the privilege to play," said Dillard, the Valley's freshman of the year last season. "I think this year he's going to come out with a lot of fire, a lot of energy, and that's going to help us win."

And if Freeman can help SIUC win and get back into the NCAA Tournament after a two-year absence, if he can get its roster of nine other newcomers headed in the right direction, then his one year in Carbondale will have been very much worth it.