With a day left, Northern Districts was 240 for eight wickets in its second innings and will look to push on and set a target this morning. It had a two-run lead on the first innings.
To get through to that score was some achievement from the home side as it had a terrible start to its second innings.
It lost its first three wickets without a run on the board as Jacob Duffy and Sam Wells combined to take the top off the Northern Districts order.
Duffy picked up Daniel Flynn and Bharat Popli while Wells had Tim Seifert caught by Mark Bracewell behind the wicket
Cory Anderson was then caught in the covers and Northern Districts was 25 for four wickets and Otago looked to be in the box seat.
But BJ Watling was still there and he grew as the day went on.
Watling was sound in everything he did and looked all set for a century.
But just four short of a hundred he played all round a ball from spinner Michael Rippon and was judged to be lbw.
Watling was not happy with the decision but he had done his job and his knock was invaluable for his side.
He shared a 91-run eighth-wicket partnership with Joe Walker which helped Northern Districts into a position of some strength.
Earlier, Otago had just fallen short of getting past the home team's first innings total.
The Otago side resumed on 270 for eight wickets wanting to get as far ahead of Northern Districts as possible.
Northern had made 278 and Otago got to within two runs of the first innings before losing its last two wickets.
Scott Kuggeleijn took both wickets to come away from the first innings with a bag of five wickets.
First innings points are no longer applied in the competition.
Duffy bowled well in the second innings and, by the end of the day, had racked up an impressive spell and also snared three wickets.
Michael Rae also picked up two wickets.
In the other matches, Wellington leads by 54 runs after two days of its match against Canterbury at the Basin Reserve.
In Auckland, the home side has a lead of 173 runs with eight wickets left, and one day to go.
Central Districts declared 129 runs behind after Tom Bruce had hit a classy century, scoring an undefeated 127 in a total of 256 for eight wickets.
