PROVO, Utah – With a share of first place in the West Coast Conference on the line, the Santa Clara volleyball team was unable to overcome a strong effort by BYU, which prevailed Thursday night at home in four sets 25-19, 25-21, 23-25, 25-14.

Senior Alexa Gray posted a career-high 31 kills and had a match-best .464 hitting percentage for the 12th-ranked Cougars (24-3, 14-2) who took over sole possession of first place with two games remaining.

The Broncos (21-7, 12-4) had their three-match winning streak snapped and are now third in the WCC, also trailing San Diego (20-7, 13-3). Santa Clara, winners of 12 of its last 15, plays at San Diego Saturday. The Broncos close out the regular season Tuesday at Pacific.

Freshman Anna McCreadie tallied a career-high 14 kills and Nikki Hess added 13 for Santa Clara, which dealt the Cougars one of their three loses back in September.

Road victories are hard to come by in the WCC. BYU is a perfect 10-0 at home this year, while Santa Clara suffered just one home defeat in 12 games this year.

After BYU captured the first set, the Broncos were poised to even the match. They held a 16-11 lead following a kill by Sabrina Clayton on one of Kirsten Mead's match-best 49 assists, but BYU reeled off the next three points. The game went to be tied three more times before BYU took the lead for good at 22-21 on a Gray kill.

Santa Clara drew closer with a hard-fought win in the third set. BYU took the biggest lead of the game at 9-6 on a Gray kill, but the Broncos got back-to-back kills from Jensen Cunningham and Clayton to pull within one. A kill by Clayton followed by an attack error from Gray gave the Broncos a 12-11 lead.

But a pair of Santa Clara attack errors sandwiched around a Camry Williardson kill pushed BYU into a 23-22 lead. But after a timeout the Broncos got an attack error on blocks from Mead and Cunningham to regain serve where they closed out the game on back-to-back kills from that same duo.

Santa Clara could not gain its footing in the fourth set after an early 6-5 lead. Three straight errors pushed the BYU lead to 11-7. Later in the set, two kills by Gray in a four-straight point stretch increased the lead to 19-10 in a set where the Cougars hit at .533 percent clip.

The Broncos had an opportunity to pull out the first set, cutting an early seven-point deficit to 18-17 on a kill by Lacey Maas, but BYU reeled off six of the next seven points.