Clem Haskins saw an immediate reward for his basketball team's foreign trip in 1989.
The former University of Minnesota coach reached the program's first NCAA Elite Eight after his players bonded and gained confidence while playing together in New Zealand and Australia the previous summer.
"I think it helped a lot," said Richard Coffey, a junior forward in 1989-90. "It was great timing for our team because we had just come off two years of not being so good. That just made the whole team much stronger."
Almost 30 years later, Minnesota and other Division I college basketball programs around the country are still benefiting from the NCAA rule allowing teams to receive 10 extra practices and play several exhibition games outside of the U.