No. 25 BYU spent Friday night looking like two different teams. One ran UCLA out of the first set and hit .476 in the fifth. The other hit below zero in the second and let the Bruins force a decider.
Both versions count. BYU won 25-15, 22-25, 25-17, 20-25, 15-10 because it found the good one again before the night ran out.
The fifth set broke at 6-6. Kaylie Kofe served an ace, two UCLA attacks went long, and the Cougars had the first four-point cushion of the set. They never let the margin shrink below three. Claire Little Chambers put down a kill at 13-10, then Alex Bower ended the match with an ace.
That four-point run is the cleanest answer to the question BYU carried out of its loss to No. 2 Pittsburgh. Could this offense recover inside a match after a good start disappeared? Against UCLA, barely but yes.
BYU-UCLA score and box-score receipt
| Match item | No. 25 BYU | UCLA |
|---|---|---|
| Final | 3 | 2 |
| Set scores | 25, 22, 25, 20, 15 | 15, 25, 17, 25, 10 |
| Kills | 61 | 55 |
| Attack errors | 29 | 31 |
| Hitting percentage | .199 | .156 |
| Aces | 6 | 3 |
| Team blocks | 13.5 | 14 |
| Digs | 56 | 50 |
Elli Mortensen led BYU with 16 kills. Little Chambers had 13 kills, 13 digs and two aces while becoming the 24th player in program history to reach 1,000 career kills. Sophia Callahan added 12 kills and six blocks. Kelli Jo Burgess finished with seven kills at .333 and 10 blocks, the most by a Cougar in a match since 2024 according to BYU Athletics.
UCLA middle Marianna Singletary was the hardest problem on the floor. She had 16 kills with one error on 27 attacks, a .556 hitting percentage, plus nine blocks. Brooke Harwood added 12 kills at .364, and libero Lola Schumacher had 19 digs.
The Cougars moved to 5-1. UCLA fell to 5-2, with both losses coming against ranked teams. The announced crowd was 5,034 inside Smith Fieldhouse.
The winning-set offense and losing-set offense barely resembled each other
The match average of .199 hides the useful split.
| BYU attack split | Kills | Errors | Attempts | Hitting percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sets 1, 3 and 5 | 39 | 9 | 91 | .330 |
| Sets 2 and 4 | 22 | 20 | 70 | .029 |
BYU hit .412 in the first set. Six Cougars recorded a kill, and the offense scored 17 of its 25 points with attacks. UCLA never led and did not get closer than three after BYU moved ahead 7-4.
Then the whole thing jammed. BYU committed 11 attack errors in the second set, three more than its kill total, and hit minus-.094. UCLA’s six blocks mattered, especially around Burgess, but the Cougars helped the Bruins with rushed swings and a bad set. A late 5-1 BYU push tied the set at 21. UCLA answered by taking four of the last five points.
The third set was a partial repair rather than a return to the opener. BYU hit .167, but its block took over. The Cougars recorded six team blocks while UCLA hit .027. A 6-1 start gave BYU room to play through its own five attack errors, and Little Chambers’ ace made it 21-15 before the Cougars closed on a 4-1 run.
UCLA dragged the match back into the mud in the fourth. The Bruins turned a 9-9 tie into a 14-8 lead while BYU committed three straight attack errors. BYU pulled within three twice, but never closer. The Cougars hit .132 and gave UCLA nine more attack errors to work with.
Across the two sets it lost, BYU produced only two more kills than errors. That is not a small efficiency dip. It is a different match.
Burgess gave BYU time to find the fifth-set offense
BYU did not win the block column. UCLA edged it 14 to 13.5. Burgess still changed the court.
Her 10 block assists doubled the next-highest total in the match. Six came in the third and fourth sets, when neither side could keep a clean attack for long. She also gave BYU seven kills with only two errors on 15 swings.
The second set was her rough patch. Burgess committed consecutive attack errors during the UCLA run that put the Bruins ahead 10-7, and Singletary had a solo block on the second swing. She did not record a kill in the set.
Burgess answered with one kill and four blocks in the third, then another kill and four blocks in the fourth. The fourth still got away, but UCLA had to keep solving the middle while it built the lead. That mattered when the match reached 6-6 in the fifth. BYU could serve aggressively without feeling as if every neutral ball belonged to UCLA.
The fifth-set box score credits BYU with no team blocks. Burgess’ contribution had already paid for the chance to play it.
Kofe’s service turn created the separation
Kofe and Bower again split the setting work, with Bower finishing at 31 assists and Kofe at 21. The decisive fifth-set contribution came from behind the service line.
UCLA tied the set at 6-6 on an Ava Utterback kill. Kofe’s next serve produced an ace for 8-6 after the teams changed ends. Two more serves ended in UCLA attack errors. In four points, the fifth set went from level to 10-6.
It was not a complicated tactical miracle. Kofe put pressure on UCLA’s first contact, and the Bruins’ next two swings missed. BYU then sided out at 11-8 through Mortensen and at 13-10 through Little Chambers. The Cougars did not need another long scoring run because they protected the one they had.
That last detail separates Friday from the third-set squeeze at Boise State. BYU nearly gave back a 20-14 lead in Boise before escaping 26-24. Against UCLA, the Cougars reached the same kind of late tension with far less margin for error. The serve created four points of room, and the sideout offense kept three of them.
Mortensen’s fifth set was her cleanest: three kills on four attacks without an error. Little Chambers added three kills on seven swings. Callahan put down both of her attempts. Together those three pins supplied eight of BYU’s 11 kills in the decider.
Little Chambers’ milestone came with the full outside-hitter job
The 1,000th-kill headline belongs to Little Chambers. The rest of her line explains why the milestone did not arrive as empty ceremony.
She took 32 attacks, second on the team, and hit .281. She also handled 32 serve receptions with one error, tied for the team lead with 13 digs and served two aces. This was a six-rotation assignment against a UCLA team that had enough block and serving pressure to break BYU’s attack for two entire sets.
Little Chambers did not carry the offense by herself. Mortensen took 43 swings. Callahan scored 15 points. Burgess controlled space at the net. Kofe and Bower shared 52 assists and four of BYU’s six aces.
That distribution is what made the milestone useful team evidence. Little Chambers reached four digits while BYU found points through five other attackers and survived the stretches when her own attack was not available.
Her three fifth-set kills were the better part of the story. Career totals tell us how much work came before Friday. Those three helped decide what happened Friday.
Utah Valley comes next, with one correction still open
BYU hosts Utah Valley on Tuesday, Sept. 15, at 6:30 p.m. Mountain on ESPN+. The official volleyball schedule carries the listing and any late change.
The Cougars do not need to apologize for a five-set win over a 5-2 UCLA team. They also should not file away the 20 attack errors from sets two and four. Pittsburgh punished the same disappearance over the final two sets last week. UCLA did it in alternating sets and nearly left Provo with the match.
Friday’s answer was real. BYU hit .476 in the fifth, scored 11 kills with one attack error and won the first pressure set it has played this season.
The next step is making sure the answer arrives before a fifth set is necessary.
Sources and further reading
- BYU Athletics, Sept. 11: Little Chambers reaches 1,000 kills as BYU beats UCLA for BYU’s official result, set account, milestone context, player leaders and Utah Valley listing.
- UCLA Athletics, Sept. 11: Women’s volleyball falls in five sets at No. 25 BYU for independent confirmation of the result, UCLA player lines, ranked-loss context and the fifth-set account.
- Official BYU-UCLA box score PDF for set-by-set hitting, play-by-play, complete player lines, team totals, attendance and the calculations above.
- Finalized WMT game 6597514 and player statistics for the final score, records, venue, team totals and individual match data.
- BYU Athletics: official event record for completed status, Smith Fieldhouse, event identity and official result references.
- BYU Sport Nuts: volleyball hub, roster, Pittsburgh result analysis and Boise State result analysis.
