The coaching profession is a brutal one, requiring plenty of sleepless nights and hours poring over film to try to find an edge.

Dan Hurley knows this better than anyone, and he's outwardly as maniacal about those extremes as any coach in the country.

But, sometimes, it doesn't matter how much you gameplan and what scheme you draw up—sometimes you simply get beaten by a better team.

As painful as that may be to digest that, it is exactly what happened to UConn in its attempt to win its third national championship in four seasons.

They simply got beat.

"They're legit," Hurley said of the Wolverines. "They deserved to win the national championship. They're clearly the best team in the country this year."

The Huskies made Michigan play the game on its terms, something Hurley knew was the only way they could keep this game close.

UConn kept the Wolverines out of transition, limiting them to a single fast break basket. It also limited them to 2-for-15 shooting from three-point range. Yaxel Lendeborg finished with just 13 points on 13 shots, as the Huskies largely succeeded in limiting the impact of one of the nation's best players.

Those three factors had been the common thread in the games Michigan either lost or failed to play up to its standard.

Want to know why the national champions were in a dogfight with Penn State back in January, or why they trailed Northwestern by double digits in the second half in February?

Those factors limited Michigan's effectiveness.

So not only was UConn able to do that, but it actually won the rebounding battle against that vaunted Wolverine front line. The Huskies had 22 offensive rebounds, which was the most they had in any game this season.

And yet, Michigan led for more than 30 minutes. That includes the entire second half—and by multiple possessions at that.

That's because UConn simply couldn't solve Michigan's defense or find an offensive rhythm.

"Early in the second half, the game got a little bit chippy and physical, so we thought that this is going to be a game we just have to figure it out," Dusty May said after the game. "We started going offensive and defensive substitutions early. And UConn was dominating us on the glass. Credit to them...but we did feel like we were defending well enough that we were going to be able to find enough baskets."

Tarris Reed had been the Huskies' easy button throughout the NCAA Tournament. His dominant play was the single biggest factor in UConn even making it to this point, with Hurley acknowledging beforehand that the title game was “going to be determined by what Tarris Reed does."

Michigan's length and physicality visibly bothered Reed, as Mara limited him to just 4-for-12 shooting from the field—his worst performance in weeks.

But it wasn't just Reed who had difficulty finishing inside. UConn went just 4-for-10 on layups and struggled mightily around the paint. Michigan finished with six blocks, too.

"They're just so hard to score against at the rim," Hurley lamented. "I could talk about the threes that we missed, and I thought we had a lot of good threes that we missed. But they just made it so tough on us around the rim.

"That was probably what even got us more than the missed threes was some of those rim shots, all those transition baskets. I think they cut it to four and we could have put some serious game pressure on them. They changed so many shots around the rim. They're just so tall."

The inability to get to the rim also impacted the rest of UConn's shooting. The Huskies never found a consistent flow or built momentum. When it needed to mount a comeback in the second half, everything clanked off the rim. The Huskies shot a measly 28.9 percent from the field in the second half.

And while Michigan's defense deserves credit for that, the lack of offensive firepower—or at least the inconsistent offensive output—has been a common theme

In Saturday's win over Illinois, the Huskies went nearly eight minutes in the first half with only one made shot, and then endured a five-minute stretch in the second half where they failed to score. Cold stretches nearly sank them against Duke, and a cold stretch allowed Michigan State to mount a furious rally in their Sweet 16 matchup.

"We came up short, missed some shots we normally make, but we gave it our all," Alex Karaban said after playing his final game. "I'm proud of the guys in the locker room. I'm proud of Coach [Hurley]. It's going to sting, but everything happens for a reason."

That sting is going to be sharper than normal because of the reality that comes with losses like this. UConn did everything it wanted to do and still couldn't get over the hump. It knew it had a small margin for error and nearly threaded the needle.

Yes, some shots didn't fall, but Michigan's defense had a ton to do with that.

Immediately after the final buzzer sounded, Hurley kept his team on the floor, waiting to shake hands with the Michigan players after their on-court celebration. It was a classy move, but it also felt like an acknowledgement.

Hurley has routinely talked about basketball games being a war, and his job is to get his troops ready for battle. The moment also felt symbolic of the realization that UConn—on the brink of being a dynasty the sport hasn't seen in decades—faced a worthy adversary, one that bested it on the sport's biggest stage.