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POCATELLO, Idaho -- In a season that's been focused so much on the present, Northern Colorado volleyball got a glimpse of the future Friday night inside Idaho State's Reed Gymnasium.

It was there that true-freshman Kelley Arnold continued her torrid stretch of late with a career-high 19 kills with just two errors (.447 hitting) to propel the Bears to a 3-2 (25-21, 26-24, 19-25, 22-25, 15-13) victory against the Bengals.

Arnold also laid out for six digs and contributed to a pair of huge game-five blocks in the win that kept Northern Colorado (15-9, 8-2 Big Sky) on pace with conference leaders Eastern Washington and Portland State, who also won Friday night and moved to 9-2 in the league.

"Kelley really stepped up tonight," Northern Colorado coach Lyndsey Benson said. "We gave her a lot of opportunities, and she took full advantage. She also had some good blocks, too."

The Bears entered Friday's contest with a 7-0 record against Idaho State in Big Sky play, and at the ouset of this one, it looked like they would push that mark to 8-0 with ease after hitting .438 in the first game and .419 in the second.

The Bengals (9-14, 3-8) forced the tiebreaker by cooling the Bears' offense to the tune of .056 hitting in game three and .222 in game four, but Northern Colorado got off the mat when it mattered most and scooped more digs (19) than it had in any other game to earn the gotta-have-it victory and move to a program best eight matches over the .500 mark in Big Sky competition (33-25).

"I'm really proud of the way we bounced back within the match," Benson said. "We kind of fell into a lull a little bit there, but we gutted it out and got a win that we really needed. But we know we'll have to play better down the road."

If Arnold's outing was a testament to what the future holds for Northern Colorado volleyball, the performances of some seniors and a junior was there to remind all Bears fans just how far this program has come in the short time Benson has been on the bench.

Allison Raguse, Taylor Smith, Kenzie Shreeve and Breanna VanDerMost (this year's seniors) and Ashley Lichtenberg (a junior) all finished with statlines worthy of top-billing, too.

Raguse tied her season high with 16 kills and 14 digs for her fifth double-double of the season, Smith set a season high with seven blocks, Shreeve threw down 15 kills to finish in double-digit kills for the fifth-straight match, VanDerMost scooped a game-high 26 digs, and Lichtenberg had 10 kills and just two errors to finish with a .381 hitting percentage, just a tick above the .356 percentage she entered the match with.

And the Bears needed all of those performances to sneak out of Idaho with the victory and move on to tomorrow night's Halloween contest with Weber State.

The Bengals finished with a .276 team hitting mark Friday night, so this was just the third time this season out of six chances that Northern Colorado has emerged victorious after allowing an opponent to hit .250 or better.

"Our defense struggled a bit tonight and they (Idaho State) had their way with us offensively, at times," Benson said. "I'm happy we got the win, but if we're going to do what we want to do this season, we have to do a better job of defending."

NOTES: With the win Friday night, Northern Colorado moved to 3-4 this season in five-set matches ... Arnold has now registered double-digit kills in seven of nine matches ... the Bears are now 8-0 against ISU since joining the BSC in 2006 ... Northern Colorado is 9-1 overall against ISU since the teams’ began playing each other in 1980 ... Shreeve moved into 10th on Northern Colorado's all-time kills list in the victory (1,072) ... VanDerMost moved into ninth on the Bears' all-time digs list (1,367).