With the FIBA U19 World Championships starting this morning in Latvia, Michigan sophomore Tim Hardaway Jr. and his Team USA teammates hope they learned some lessons in consecutive blowout exhibition losses in Lithuania.

Hardaway provided one of the few bright spot for the USA Basketball U19 team in those exhibition games, coming off the bench to score a team-high 18 points in Sunday’s 101-72 loss to the Lithuanian U20 national team.

Two days later, he went 0-for-8 from the floor and finished with five points from the free-throw line in a 108-75 loss to the Lithuanian U19 team.

“I think we are improving. I do think we have time to continue to improve,” said Team USA coach Paul Hewitt. “I saw some good things (Tuesday), hopefully we’ll keep moving forward.”

Hardaway came off the bench in both games, but played more combined minutes than any other player on the 12-man Team USA roster.

He’s made 7 of 26 (.269) shots from the floor, 2 of 12 (.166) from 3-point range, 7 of 10 (.700) free throws and is averaging 3.5 rebounds, 3 steals and 1.5 assists.

Sixteen of Hardaway’s points on Sunday came in the second half, after Lithuania had built a 59-27 halftime lead. Hewitt credited Hardaway with starting the Team USA comeback attempt - it cut the lead to 15 twice - with some strong defense.

“We want to run and get as many easy points as we can. We’re a very athletic team so we rely on getting good defensive stops, turnovers and deflections and hoping we can get in transition and get wide open layups and dunks,” Hardaway said.

That sounds a lot like Michigan coach John Beilein’s philosophy. In an interview with WTKA-AM morning host Sam Webb earlier this week, Beilein agreed that Team USA is “playing a lot like we play.”

Beilein said Hewitt’s use of ball screens, in particular, against high-level international competition will help Hardaway further develop his game before the Wolverines’ 2011-12 season.

To maximize the experience, Team USA will have to get out of the World Championships round-robin group play that begins today.

Team USA opens against Egypt at 9 a.m. in Liepaja, Latvia, before games against Serbia (9 a.m. Friday) and China (11:15 p.m. Saturday).

The top three teams from that four-team group advance to 12-team second round.

“I think this is a learning curve for us because we’ve just been together for a little over a week now and this loss is helping prepare us for what is coming up,” Florida sophomore Patric Young said after Tuesday’s exhibition loss. “This is going to help prepare us for Egypt, Serbia and China and hopefully we’ll get another chance at these guys and give them a better fight next time.”