But captain Derek de Boorder believes his side may have to win all three of its remaining round-robin matches to make the playoffs.
Otago's match with Wellington at the University Oval on Sunday was abandoned without a ball bowled and before that the Volts lost three consecutive games, all in the last over.
It has been a demoralising run. And off the field there has been a significant distraction with coach Vaughn Johnson resigning following allegations of financial misconduct.
In a press release issued by the Otago Cricket Association, Johnson admitted to making some poor decisions concerning his finances that had reflected poorly on Otago cricket.
However, de Boorder felt it was wrong to link Johnson's decision to resign with Otago's string of losses.
''It is not the ideal preparation but I think the team has coped pretty well considering,'' de Boorder told the Otago Daily Times earlier in the week.
''It hasn't seemed to have affected us in any way on the field. You can try and draw conclusions between that and the results but you'd be going down the wrong track. The boys are still trying to do it for the right reasons.''
Those reasons are to make the playoffs and a win against Auckland in Invercargill today and at Eden Park Outer Oval on Sunday will go along way towards achieving that.
Northern Districts leads the competition with 18 points from Canterbury (13) and Auckland (12). Central is clinging to fourth spot with 10 points and Wellington (8) and Otago (6) are still in contention but in a precarious position.
''It probably means we have to win the next three and hope a few results go our way, by the looks of it,'' de Boorder responded when asked what Sunday's abandoned match meant for his side's playoff prospects.
''It has been one of those campaigns where I don't think we've really played a lot of bad cricket, to be honest. If you look at the scores we've put up - we've being doing a good job with the bat.
''But if there is anywhere we've let ourselves down, it has been in the field. But when you lose a game in the last over three times in a row, you can't really clutch at too many things or say we've played badly and done this or done that.
''You need a couple of things to go your way to end up on the right side of the ledger and we saw that in the twenty20 campaign. We managed to be on the right side there but are now experiencing how those other teams must have felt.
''It has probably been the one or two percenters that have cost us in these games when you are losing by five or six runs.''
Ford Trophy: Otago v Auckland
Where: Queens Park, Invercargill
When: 10.30am, today
Otago: Aaron Redmond, Hamish Rutherford, Michael Bracewell, Ryan ten Doeschate, Jesse Ryder, Sam Wells, Derek de Boorder (captain), Ian Butler, Neil Wagner, Nick Beard, Bradley Scott, Mark Craig
Auckland: Jeet Raval, Anaru Kitchen, Craig Cachopa, Colin de Grandhomme, Gareth Hopkins, Robert O'Donnell, Donovan Grobbelaar, Jono Sole, Michael Bates, Matt Quinn, Bhupinder Singh, Tipene Friday
