Good thing football is back on Fridays

And we’re back to normal. After playing most high school football games on a Thursday last week because of the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday that began at sundown Friday, most Arizona schools are back to a Friday schedule.

This isn’t anything against celebrating the Jewish holiday (as I am one of them celebrating, or, er, atoning), but there is certainly something lacking in the air when football is played  on a school night.

The bands don’t seem to have the same pep to them, the players aren’t as spirited and the fans are not existent in some places.

But we’re back to a regular schedule and that’s a good thing. Boulder Creek will try to make it two wins in a row, Cactus Shadows tries to shake off a shutout loss, Goldwater searches for an offense and Pinnacle hopes to keep rolling right along.

Here we go with this week’s local prep, college and Cardinals picks:

BOULDER CREEK 30, CIBOLA 10. The Jaguars’ offense returned in last week’s win over South Mountain. They won’t score as many points this week, but Cibola will certainly give them up. It’s back to another winning streak for Boulder Creek, which should win easily.

CACTUS SHADOWS 21, SHADOW MOUNTAIN 13. A week after suffering a rude awakening about life in the new Desert Sky Region, Cactus Shadows should be fired up to get that first region win at the 4A‑Division I level. This will be the Falcons’ best chance to get a region victory, too, so they better get it while they can.

DOBSON 28, GOLDWATER 17. Where did Goldwater’s offense go? The Bulldogs are desperate to get on the scoreboard and will need to do so against Dobson. The resurgent Mesa school posted 39 points in a showing shutout of Chandler earlier in the year and played Hamilton tough in the second half. It might be asking too much for the Bulldogs to outscore them this week when they haven’t scored in three games.

PINNACLE 53, KOFA 0. Pinnacle is playing the best football of any team in the 5A‑Division II conference. The Pioneers have started out 4‑0 against four teams that were all talented enough to beat them, but didn’t. Poor Kofa comes in from Yuma this week to play the hottest team in its homecoming game. Kofa has a win coming in, but they won’t even come close to riding home with two.

ARIZONA STATE 44, STANFORD 24. Is ASU for real? It’s still hard to tell. Two things are for certain, however: The team knows how to come back from a deficit, and its offense is pretty darn good. Stanford’s isn’t. But it seems like this might be another case where the Devils let an opponent hang around early before blowing them out in the second half.

WASHINGTON STATE 32, ARIZONA 28. The Arizona Wildcats are continuing their decade‑long funk that started with the hiring of John Mackovic and ended with the ... um, it hasn’t ended yet. Cats faithful are excited in Tucson that they played California close in the second half of last week’s game. Too bad they were down by more than 20 points before choosing to start playing.

NORTHERN ARIZONA 35, SACRAMENTO STATE 24. The Lumberjacks should have only two losses heading into a late October Big Sky Conference showdown with Montana. Sacramento State is merely a roadblock to that game.

STEELERS 23, CARDINALS 22. I’m trying to think of what would be the most dramatic, heartbreaking way to lose a game for the Cardinals because that’s what will happen against the Steelers. For now, I’ll go with the Steelers scoring 23 points in the final 60 seconds all on freak plays. This time it will be Kurt Warner blowing the game.

Last Week: 6‑2 (.750)

Season: 19‑8 (.704)