Basketball players from the Pacific 10 Conference are enjoying some international preseason basketball play before the summer ends, and two UA basketball players will play with them.

University of Arizona juniors Michael Dickerson and Adia Barnes will tour Japan Aug. 8-18 with the men's and women's Pac-10 All-Star teams. Dickerson averaged 11.9 points a game last season. Barnes won the MVP of the 1996 NWIT postseason tournament and av eraged 17.4 points last season.

"It's a great opportunity," Barnes said Monday. "I think we're going to be very successful."

This week, the women's team is practicing at McKale Center, and held a scrimmage Tuesday. All practice sessions are open the public.

The women's team is coached by the UA's head coach Joan Bonvicini and assistant coach Traci Waites. The Pac-10 men's team is practicing at Washington State, coached by Washington State head coach Kevin Eastman and assistant coach Mark Turgeon from Oregon.

"It's a great honor, but we do it alphabetically," Bonvicini said of her selection. The Washington State women's coach was due to coach this year, but changed jobs, Bonvicini said.

The team has only eight practices before leaving for Japan, Bonvicini said, so the time constraints are very real.

"Every practice, you introduce a new concept," Bonvicini said.

This will be the eighth time a Pac-10 men's team has participated in a foreign tour, and the fourth time for a Pac-10 women's team.

"They 're good representatives of the Pac-10," Bonvicini said of the players.

The student athletes were required to do research into Japanese culture, Japan-United States relations and other issues to prepare them for the trip, Bonvicini said.

"It's worked out really well. I'm really excited," Bonvicini said

Each team of 10 athletes, one from each Pac-10 institution, will depart from San Francisco for Fukuoka, Japan, Thursday. They will compete in cities such as Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe and Fukui.

The competition should be tougher than what the Wildcats face during the year, Barnes said. She said the women's team will face the Japanese Olympic Team in one of the games.

"We want to leave there beating them," Barnes said.

The teams play a total of four exhibition games before returning to the U.S. on Aug. 18.