Baylor had more kills, a better hitting percentage and one more block Friday night. BYU had Brooke Hardy at the service line.
That trade was enough.
No. 22 BYU beat No. 17 Baylor 25-19, 25-23, 21-25, 22-25, 15-10 at Smith Fieldhouse, surviving the Bears’ two-set comeback to open Big 12 play at 1-0. Hardy produced six of BYU’s nine aces without a service error. Claire Little Chambers then finished the fifth set with five kills on eight swings, including the final point.
The Cougars improved to 9-1, but this was no tidy extension of their three straight sweeps. Baylor hit .393, scored 87 total points to BYU’s 85 and won the kill count 75-67. The match turned because BYU created cheaper points from the service line, kept those points in the right sets and found Little Chambers after the teams reached 8-8 in the fifth.
BYU-Baylor match receipt
| Category | BYU | Baylor |
|---|---|---|
| Final | 3 | 2 |
| Set scores | 25, 25, 21, 22, 15 | 19, 23, 25, 25, 10 |
| Kills | 67 | 75 |
| Attack errors | 20 | 18 |
| Attempts | 150 | 145 |
| Hitting percentage | .313 | .393 |
| Aces | 9 | 2 |
| Service errors | 4 | 14 |
| Blocks | 9 | 10 |
| Digs | 46 | 47 |
This is a strange winning box score. Baylor’s 75 kills are the sort of total that usually controls a five-set match. Ksenia Rakhmanchik put down 26 while hitting .478. Freshman Nadiya Johnson added 20 on .350 hitting, and setter Isabela Haggard finished with 57 assists, six kills and five blocks.
BYU did not stop that offense. It made Baylor pay before the offense could start.
The serve differential was nine aces to two, and the error differential was four to 14. Baylor gave away 10 more serves and surrendered seven more aces. That is a 17-point swing in the one phase that does not require beating a block or finding floor against a defender.
BYU needed nearly all of it.
Hardy changed the terms of the match
The pregame question was whether BYU’s serve could pull Haggard away from the middle and make Baylor’s balanced attack easier to read. Baylor’s .393 hitting percentage gives the honest answer: not often enough.
Hardy still found another route to points.
The freshman middle finished with 11 kills on 17 swings, only two errors, a .529 hitting percentage, six aces and two blocks. Her 11 kills and six aces were career highs. BYU Athletics also identified the ace total as the program’s freshman single-match record in the rally-scoring era.
The total matters, but the placement matters more. Hardy recorded two aces during BYU’s 11-4 close to the first set. She added another while the Cougars built a 15-7 lead in the second. Baylor recovered enough to make that frame 25-23, but the early service damage gave BYU room for the rally.
Then came the fifth.
The teams changed ends tied 8-8. A Baylor error and an unsuccessful challenge moved BYU ahead 10-8. Hardy followed with a short serve that Baylor could not return, forcing the Bears to use their second timeout in two points. One serve turned a narrow lead into a three-point break and left Baylor without another timeout for the finish.
Hardy’s six aces were not padded during harmless stretches. They helped win the first two sets and broke the fifth open. She also served all night without an error while Baylor missed 14 times as a team.
That is the match’s cleanest explanation. Baylor was better when the ball settled into ordinary offense. Hardy kept making the first contact extraordinary.
Baylor’s comeback was real
BYU led 2-0, but the result was not a failed Baylor comeback rescued by one lucky fifth-set run. The Bears changed the quality of the match.
They hit .643 in the third set, producing 19 kills with one error on 28 attempts. BYU hit .324 and scored 17 kills of its own, a productive set by any normal standard. It still lost 25-21 because Baylor’s side-out offense gave almost nothing back.
Rakhmanchik carried six kills in that set without an error. Johnson added six more on nine swings. Haggard distributed 18 assists and Baylor committed only two service errors after missing nine serves across the first two sets.
The fourth was almost as sharp. Baylor hit .390 with 20 kills and survived a BYU push that put the Cougars ahead 15-14. The Bears answered, won the set 25-22 and entered the fifth having landed 39 kills over two sets.
This is where the win says more about BYU than a straight-set result would have. The Cougars did not discover a way to shut down Rakhmanchik or Johnson. They accepted that Baylor’s best attackers were landing swings and won the shorter race anyway.
Baylor finished with eight more kills for the match because 39 of them came in sets three and four. Those kills earned two set wins, not carryover points. Volleyball resets the scoreboard, and BYU used the reset better.
Little Chambers owned the race from eight
Little Chambers led BYU with 21 kills on .450 hitting, nine digs, two aces and three blocks. Her full line was excellent. Her fifth set was the deciding piece.
She had five kills on eight attempts in the final frame. With the score tied 8-8, BYU’s next six points included the Baylor error, Hardy’s short-serve ace, two Little Chambers kills and a block. The Cougars reached match point at 14-8.
Baylor scored twice to interrupt the finish. BYU called timeout at 14-10, then went straight back to Little Chambers. She ended the match with her 21st kill.
That sequence was not a desperate high-ball bailout. BYU had four attackers reach double figures: Little Chambers with 21, Elli Mortensen with 17, Hardy with 11 and Sophia Callahan with 10. Kaylie Kofe and Alex Bower split 51 assists. Baylor had to account for the full net.
The fifth set still required one hitter to take the final responsibility. Little Chambers did, scoring five of BYU’s 10 kills in the frame while hitting .500.
Her value was larger than the last set. Baylor targeted her in serve receive 26 times, the most on BYU’s side. She made one reception error. She also contributed four assists. On a night when Baylor kept asking her to handle another job before attacking, she remained BYU’s most efficient high-volume scorer.
Mortensen gave BYU the extra contact it needed
Mortensen’s 17 kills and career-high 14 digs produced her first career double-double. She hit .361 and committed four attack errors on 36 swings.
Her back-row work mattered because Baylor’s offense kept clearing BYU’s block. The Bears won the block count 10-9 and the dig count 47-46, small margins that fit the match. Mortensen’s 14 digs were the highest total on either team and gave BYU a second point of stability next to Lulu Po’uha and Little Chambers, who each had nine.
Mortensen also kept the attack from narrowing completely toward Little Chambers. She had four kills in the first set and three in the fifth. Baylor could see where BYU wanted to finish the match, but it could not release from Mortensen early enough to erase that option.
Burgess finished with seven blocks, matching the useful part of the Utah State sweep even though Baylor was far more efficient around her. The block did not dominate Friday. It remained present long enough to help produce the 14-8 fifth-set lead.
The concern travels with the win
BYU allowed an opponent to hit .393 at home. Baylor scored 75 kills and had two players reach 20. Those are not footnotes hidden by the final score.
The Cougars’ block had been the headline through nonconference play. Against Baylor’s distribution, it could not control enough swings to win the match on its own. Haggard had three attackers above .345, scored six kills herself and kept Baylor efficient even after BYU’s serve disrupted individual rotations.
BYU also let a 2-0 lead reach a fifth set. The Bears deserve most of that credit after hitting .643 and .390 in the two comeback frames, but the Cougars will not want to make a habit of asking the service line to overcome an eight-kill deficit.
Still, ranked conference wins do not need to be cosmetically perfect. BYU found a phase it could own, received career nights from two freshmen and trusted its leading attacker after 8-8. A team can learn more from solving that mess than from another sweep against an overmatched opponent.
The 4,842 fans at Smith Fieldhouse got the entire argument in one night: Baylor’s offense was every bit as dangerous as advertised, BYU’s block could not erase it, and the Cougars still had enough serving pressure and late-set nerve to finish.
BYU visits Kansas State on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 5:30 p.m. Mountain on ESPN+. The volleyball schedule has the permanent event path, while the results page keeps Friday’s five-set final and official links.
The Cougars leave Provo 1-0 in the Big 12. They also leave with a clear road assignment: keep Hardy’s service pressure, keep Little Chambers available late and find a better answer when an opponent lands 75 kills.
Sources and further reading
- BYU Athletics: Cougars down Baylor in five for the official final, set sequence, Hardy and Mortensen career notes, player leaders and Kansas State follow-up.
- BYU Athletics event 25234 and the official box score for the stable schedule ID, date, venue and official result path.
- Finalized WMT game 6595850 and player statistics for the final, set scores, team splits, player lines, records, attendance and 152-minute duration.
- Big 12 Conference box score for conference-hosted independent confirmation of the final team and individual statistics.
- The Baylor Lariat: Baylor enters Big 12 play for the opponent-side context on Baylor’s young roster, Johnson’s early role and the importance Baylor placed on the opening road trip.
- BYU Sport Nuts: Baylor watch guide, Utah State recap, volleyball schedule and volleyball roster.
