Find a way to qualify.

Harris advanced to Friday’s final with a gutsy effort Wednesday evening in the semifinals. His time of 1 minute, 46.24 seconds at Hayward Field was the fourth fastest out of the three preliminary heats.

“I was ready to PR today if I had to,” Harris said. “I was ready to go 1:45, 1:44; I was ready. Just treating it like it’s my last race.”

The 2014 NCAA outdoor champion, Brandon McBride of Mississippi State, won Harris’s heat in 1:45.48 and finished with the second fastest preliminary time. McBride led the race wire-to-wire, holding off Harris and two other competitors as he cruised to victory.

Harris sat in fourth for much of the race and looked to be in danger of missing out on an automatic qualifying spot, but used a late surge at the 150-meter mark to shoot ahead of Chris Sanders of La Salle and Jonah Koech of UTEP to secure one of the six automatic qualifying spots. McBride, Harris and Sanders qualified for the final, while Koech missed out.

“It felt good,” Harris said. “Coming in here, I was treating this race like the final. During indoors I was kind of disappointed I didn’t make the final. So my plan was get in a good position and do whatever it takes to make it to the final.”

At the NCAA Indoor Championships, Harris was seeded fourth in what was considered to be a deep 800-meter field. Harris said he couldn’t find a good position during that race and got boxed in.

Unable to find a spot on the inside of the track, he ultimately finished sixth in his heat, 12th overall, and failed to grab a qualifying spot. In his first appearance on the national stage, Harris was disappointed with the result.

“That was my first big race, probably in my life,” Harris said. “In high school I didn’t really go to many big meets, and then I come here for indoors first time as a freshman and everyone’s within .05 seconds of each other.

“No one’s the big dog there — everyone’s in the game.”

Harris was seeded fifth overall for Wednesday’s race and will be one of three freshmen in the Friday’s final. Harris, who won the Big Ten conference title in the 800 earlier this spring,was the only one of the four Big Ten athletes in the race to qualify.

“I’m always looking at it like ‘I made it here, I deserve to be here,’” Harris said. “I’m not coming here happy that I made it — I’m always coming with a mission. You can score points, you can become an All-American. That was my goal today coming into this.”

The men’s 800 final will start at 9:47 p.m. Friday.

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