Bermudians Dage Minors and Shaquille Dill will battle it out in this evening’s 800 metres finals at the NCAA Division II Championships in Birmingham, Alabama.

The pair advanced after posting two of the eight fastest qualifying times in Thursday night’s preliminary heats, with Minors of Franklin Pierce University winning the third heat in 1min 52.38sec, just eight-hundredths of a second over Thomas LaRoche, a junior at Emporia State, who clocked 1:52.46.

Running out of lane three in the third and final heat of the day, Minors’s time was the third fastest of the preliminaries heats, bettered only by the top two runners in the first heat, Immanuel Hutchinson of St Augustine College, who ran 1:51.68, and Western Oregon junior Josh Dempsey, who clocked 1:52.36.

Dill, who pipped Minors for the final qualifying spot in last year’s final, claimed his spot when he finished second in heat two in a time of 1:53.78. The top two finishers from the three heats and the next two best times advanced to the final.

Dill is a sophomore at St Augustine’s University and will join team-mate Hutchinson in the final, which is set for 5.10pm.

Last year Dill ran a time of 1:51.01 to edge out Minors (1:51.04) for the last spot in the final.

The final will have three runners from heat one, three from Minors’s heat three and two from heat two where top pair, Romero and Dill, had the two slowest qualifying times.