At Crimson Court on Friday night, a record crowd saw the University of Utah women's volleyball team fight back time after time and eventually prevail in five sets over BYU, 19-25, 25-19, 27-29, 31-29 and 15-10.

Utah coach Beth Launier collected her 400th career win in the process and, rather than saying it was extra special against BYU, she said, "They certainly made me earn it."

She gave a lot of credit to BYU, saying, "They never let up. They played mentally tough, but so did we."

In the fourth set, with BYU up 2-1, it went into overtime and BYU had match point on four different occasions before the Utes finally prevailed 31-29.

BYU coach Shay Goulding echoed what Launier said: "Each team never gave up."

She added, "The intensity was there, the effort was there, but this can just happen in a rivalry like this."

It was a great matchup between Utah's Karolina Bartkowiak and BYU's Kayla Walker. But Bartkowiak recorded a career-high 22 kills. Walker ended up with 19 for the evening.

BYU jumped out to an early lead, winning the first game, but the Utes came back and won the second game by the identical score of 25-19. BYU is the best blocking team in the MWC, and overall for the match the Cougars won this battle.

But Danielle Killpack emerged for the Utes as the blocking star, recording nine for the match. She said, "They are a good blocking team, but you have to battle."

She gave credit to the coaches in preparing her.

"My coaches had a really good blocking plan," she said, and she knew she had a lot of help from her teammates. "This is a team sport."

Launiere said they talked about blocking in practice, but mainly she said, "We just said block balls and they did it."

Bartkowiak was happy that her teammates stayed with it.

"We kept our composure," she said.

Neither team could gain any momentum or could lead by more than a few points until the final game when Utah finally jumped out to a 12-7 lead and the fans could finally breathe easily before Jennifer Lanting slammed down the final kill to win the game and the match.

Launiere took the microphone and thanked 54 previous players who showed up to honor her. She also thanked her team, saying, "They showed so much perseverance. We were down so many times."

"In the end," she said, "we were able to get it done."

Utah's record improved to 9-5 overall, 3-0 in the Mountain West Conference. BYU fell to 6-7 on the season, 2-1 in the MWC.

The attendance was 1,797.

e-mail: wjewkes@desnews.com