KANSAS CITY -- Don't know about you, but I wondered how the Oregon Ducks were going to get out of that straitjacket on Thursday night.

Down three points to Michigan. Less than two minutes remaining. No timeouts. The Ducks may have been more athletic, higher seeded, and better dressed. But man oh man, they were tied in an NCAA Tournament knot, right up until they weren't.

"It sucks," Michigan's Moe Wagner said after.

Depends on your vantage point, kid. These games are like pieces of art. One guy frames it. The other blows his nose with it.

Let's be clear. Oregon was the better team. But Michigan was like that old bearded guy in the gym, knee brace, slow first step, who just threes you into submission. That painful and frustrating end was happening, right up until the Ducks stopped flopping around the stage, and popped up, smiling.

Let's call them what they are: escape artists. How does a team turn a three-point deficit into an Elite Eight berth? One made jumper, one made layup, and 68 seconds where nobody on either side takes a breath or makes a shot.

Final: Oregon 69, Michigan 68.

The Ducks are in the Elite Eight for the second straight season. On Saturday, they will presumably handcuff themselves, swallow the key, then hang upside down in a Missouri water chamber and start this escape-act madness all over again.

I will watch. I may not look away. And I'm betting that you won't either because when your team is playing deep in March, your eyes understand that every possession matters. It felt like every dribble mattered late on Thursday.

What was Oregon forward Jordan Bell thinking in the final minute?

"Do whatever you can to win," he said.

He did just that. Understand. It was not a pretty game. It walked with a limp. It clanked and clunked. The Ducks missed seven free throws. Michigan missed 20 three-point shots. Both head coaches took off their jackets and coached the game in shirts and ties. This was an uglied-up, business-casual affair. If it had gone overtime, the ties would have come off.

Oregon stars Tyler Dorsey and Dillon Brooks started the game with a combined 1 for 8 performance. The players played hard, but the nets rested.

That final minute and eight seconds, with Oregon ahead by one point, featured zero points. Think about that. Both teams pitched a shutout with the game on the line. Michigan's D.J. Wilson missed a three in that span, then Brooks missed a layup, then Dylan Ennis missed a free throw and, finally, on the game's final breath, Michigan guard Derrick Walton Jr. let fly a long jumper.

"I had a good look at the basket," he said later.

The shot goes through, so does Michigan. It didn't, though, and Bell grabbed the rebound as the horn sounded. Someone on the Oregon bench should have jumped on the scorer's table after the miss and shouted, "TAH-DAH!!" But everyone was too busy bent over at the waist, hands on knees, gasping while going, "Whew!"

"That shot could have went in it could have been Coach John Beilein and the Michigan players up here (in the winner's news conference)," Altman said. "That's how tight that game was and it could have went either way."

Victories at this stage of the tournament are precious. Kansas traded haymakers with Purdue, and trailed by eight, before knocking the Boilers out in nightcap at Sprint Center. Xavier beat Arizona by a basket. Across the bracket, in the West Regional, the headline read: "Gonzaga survives West Virginia 61-58."

You don't win at this juncture. You survive. You escape. Whether it's by one point, or three, or 11, you are an escape artist. You walk off with scratches on your neck and ice on your knees and also -- a big smile. Before the game, Oregon assistant Tony Stubblefield was watching the Ducks warm-up and someone walking past him said, "It's anyone's tournament now."

He shot back: "Any of these teams can beat ya!"

A puncher's chance. That's all Oregon ever wanted. Don't anyone say that Chris Boucher's torn ACL hasn't mattered to UO. It's mattered plenty. The Ducks aren't the same team without him. But what you can absolutely say about this team is that it's finding a way to win. It did against Rhode Island. Then, again against white-hot Michigan.

I don't know how much further the Ducks can go in the tournament. I also don't know who will stop them. That's the beautiful fragility of the bracket. The experience that Altman's team collected in the last couple of seasons is like magic syrup right now.

Wagner is right. Losing in March sucks. The Ducks lost to Wisconsin in the second round a couple of seasons ago. Last March, they beat Duke, but then got blasted out of the bracket by Buddy Hield and Oklahoma.

Hield is in the NBA now.

Oregon is back for more.

But this season, Oregon looks oddly comfortable amid the NCAA Tournament chaos. It's already met a couple of big moments with calm. There was no panic, down three to Cinderella. There was nothing frantic about the way Bell collected those golden rebounds. It was just like any old escape act on any old Thursday night.

That's how the greats make it look, you know?

-- @JohnCanzanoBFT