With regular seasons wrapping up, time for another stat roundup

The regular season for both football and volleyball in Anaconda wraps up this weekend, with the Copperheads traveling up the road to Deer Lodge tonight – Friday, Oct. 24, to take on the Wardens at 7 p.m. – while the Lady Copperheads will get to stay at home and host their regular-season finale on Saturday, Oct. 25 against Darby, with varsity tipping off at 3 p.m. 

And with both teams making the playoffs, now is the time to look back and see how they got there. We'll save the individual stats for later, but for now we'll look at some key team stats that point to the successes they've achieved on the gridiron and the court.

Let's begin with football. As a team, the 'Heads are well ahead of the national average in most respects (per MaxPreps), especially through the air as they've gained 1,586 yards on 93-for-159 passing with 12 touchdown passes, vs. an average of 798 yards on 55-for-100 passing with 8 TDs. 

They’re also outpacing the nation on the ground, to the tune of 1,194 yards on 186 carries vs. 998 yards on 167 carries, and 15 rushing TDs (the average is 13). 

And they’ve racked up 3,927 all-purpose yards (1,194 rushing, 1,586 receiving, 666 on kickoff returns, 249 on punt returns and 232 on interception returns) for 490.9 all-purpose yards per game, far above the average of 275.9.

Defensively, they’ve made 415 solo tackles plus 208 assists, including 34 tackles for loss and 13 sacks, averaging 77.9 tackles per game (the average is 50.9). They’ve also picked off 8 passes and recovered 8 fumbles (the average is 5 for both), and are averaging 29 yards per interception return (the average is 13.2). 

On special teams, they’re way ahead on yards for both kickoff returns (666 vs. 302) and punt returns (249 to 89), and also for punting with 38.9 yards per punt (the national average is 32.4). 

And for scoring, their 33 total touchdowns is ahead of the national average of 26, and they’re averaging slightly over 4 TDs per game (the average is 3.5).

That's football. Volleyball is a bit different, as many of their stats are direct comparisons with their opponents (stats are only current up through Oct. 8 vs. Deer Lodge). And as a team, the Lady Copperheads are handily outscoring their opponents in set points, 443 to 363. Their best sets by far are their opening ones, outscoring opponents 142 to 92, or winning slightly more than 60% of the points scored in the first set of each match. Set 2 tends to be strong as well, scoring 127 set points to 109 for their opponents, a rate of about 54%, which is also the case with fourth sets where they scored 65 to 55. Third sets have been more evenly matched, 109 to 107 or slightly over 50%. 

Interestingly, their serve percentage – that is, serve attempts minus serve errors divided by serve attempts – is highest in the third sets at 87.5% of serve attempts successfully put in play, just above their 87.2% rate in opening sets. Where they’ve particularly been successful in first sets, however, is hitting percentage – kills minus errors divided by attempts – where they’re succeeding at a 19.3% clip. On second sets they’re right at their season average of 12.5%, whereas in third and fourth sets they’re below 9%. 

Also of note, the Lady Copperheads have moved up in the power rankings on MaxPreps since last we checked, as Anaconda is now are ranked fifth in Class B and 15th overall. 

Check back in with us next week as we recap the regular-season finales and look ahead to the playoffs.