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GREELEY, Colo. -- Portland State's recent success in the Big Sky Conference, paired with its run early on in this conference season isn't lost on Northern Colorado head coach Lyndsey Benson.

She and her assistants have a lot of respect for the Vikings, and that humble attitude definitely played out during Benson's postgame press conference Thursday night, following the Bears' impressive 3-1 victory against the Vikings inside Butler-Hancock Sports Pavilion.

But a quick look at the box score from the 25-23, 25-19, 21-25, 25-21 win shows a definite tilt toward Benson's program.

The Bears (12-8, 6-1 Big Sky) hit .215 in the victory and limited PSU to just .157, they scooped 67 digs compared to the Vikings' 64, and stonewalled a season-best 15.5 blocks, while getting blocked just 10 times.

It all led to Northern Colorado's second-straight home victory against the Vikings (11-7, 5-2) and at the end of the night had the Bears back atop the Big Sky, thanks to Northern Arizona's later victory against Eastern Washington in Flagstaff.

The Eagles come to Greeley on Saturday night, where Benson's program has a chance to end its first run through the conference schedule by grabbing a definite stranglehold on the Big Sky race.

"We knew this was a big week coming into it, and I think our team responded very well to that," Benson said. "Especially with us coming off a tough weekend last weekend (a hard-fought victory at Montana State and a loss at Montana). It shows our maturity to bounce back and control a match like this. It's huge."

Northern Colorado couldn't have played much worse in its loss last Saturday in Missoula (the Griz hit .302 in the victory, the highest any opponent has hit against NC this season), but the Bears, who hadn't played a home match in nearly a month, couldn't have played much better Thursday night.

Senior Kenzie Shreeve had 17 kills and two blocks, junior Ashley Lichtenberg continued her amazingly strong season with 10 kills and a career-tying best seven blocks, and senior Breanna VanDerMost played one of the best defensive matches of her season with 22 digs, including a few crowd-frenzying stretch moves.

Still, Northern Colorado was never quite comfortable Thursday night, until the final point fell in its favor with a setting error on Portland State.

"We respect Portland State so much that I didn't ever feel like we were in control," Benson said. "They are such a good team that at any moment they could have gone on a three-point run and been up on us two points. So I didn't feel like we had control of that match until the last point was scored.

"I thought we did a good job when we were serving and went on some good runs. That was something we focused on this week, and that's where we gained control tonight, where we would take a two or three-point run and then sideout right away."

MATCH NOTES: Shreeve became just the 13th player Thursday night in Northern Colorado history to register 1,000 kills in her Bears career after her 17 kills against the Vikings pushed her to 1,014... VanDerMost moved into 10th all-time (1,290) on the school's all-time digs list with 22 against PSU... The Bears improved to 7-2 this season when winning the first two games... Northern Colorado's previous high for team blocks came against Denver (12), when the match went to five matches.