Canisius College senior Julius Coles scored a team-high 21 points and sophomore Gaby Belardo chipped a career-high 19 points to help lead the Golden Griffins to an 80-70 win over long-time rival St. Bonaventure in front of a sellout crowd in the Koessler Athletic Center Friday night in the season opener for both teams. Canisius is now 1-0 on the year after winning its season opener for the first time since the 2003-04 campaign.

Sophomore Alshwan Hymes posted a career-high 13 points and senior forward Greg Logins came off the bench to record 10 points. St. Bonaventure junior Andrew Nicholson led all scorers on the night with 23 points to go with seven rebounds in the losing effort for the Bonnies (0-1).

Coles, the team's top returning scorer from a season ago, scored his 21 points after shooting 8-for-16 from the floor, 1-for-5 from behind the arc and 4-for-6 from the free throw line to go with three rebounds and a steal. Belardo, who sat out all of last season after playing his freshman year at South Florida, made an impact in his first game in Blue and Gold by adding three assists and two steals to his stat line. One of those assists came in the game's first 43 seconds as he tossed a pass high in the air towards the basket, where it was caught by senior Elton Frazier, who scored the Griffs' first points of the 2010-11 campaign with an alley-oop dunk that brought the crowd of 2,196 to their feet.

"We've been gearing up for this game and I think the crowd's energy really helped us tonight," Canisius head coach Tom Parrotta said. "St. Bonaventure is a very good team and we battled back-and-forth there for a while, but our guys were able to feed off the energy in the building and down the stretch, we were able to put it away."

After Frazier's dunk and a lay-up by Coles that made the score 4-3 in favor of Canisius, the Bonnies ripped off a 12-4 run over a span of 4:14 to take a 15-8 lead with 13:03 left before the half. From there, the two old rivals battled back and forth before a lay-up by Logins with 7:17 left in the first half put Canisius up for good. Canisius went into the locker room at the break up four at 37-33 after shooting 53.3 percent from the floor in the game's first 20 minutes.

In the second half, Canisius' cushion ballooned to as much as nine points in the first 2:49 of the stanza thanks to a 7-2 run, which was capped by a pair of free throws by Coles. St. Bonaventure would chip away at that lead however, and got the game within four at 44-40 before Logins hit a 3-pointer from the corner to make it 47-40 in favor of the home team. The Bonnies made one more push at the Griffs and trailed 57-51 with 7:17 left in the game before Hymes hit back-to-back 3-pointers in a span of 1:05 to give the Griffs a comfortable 12-point margin at 63-51.

For the game, the Griffs shot 50 percent from the field and 68.6 percent from the free-throw line, while forcing 14 St. Boanventure turnovers, which turned into 13 Canisius points. The Griffs also held a 30-26 advantage in points scored in the paint.

Canisius will return to action Sunday, Nov. 14, at 3 p.m., when the team travels to play nationally-ranked Syracuse in the Carrier Dome. That game can be seen live on ESPNU.

Game Notes: This was the 159th all-time meeting between these two schools in basketball... St. Bonaventure now leads the all-time series 96-63... Prior to Friday's win, the last time Canisius won the season opener was Nov. 21, 2003, when the Griffs beat Buffalo on the road... Canisius is now 50-20 all-time in home openers and 11-8 when the season opener has been played in the Koessler Athletic Center... The 80-points scored in the opener is more than the team produced in any game last season... Coles has posted double figures in the scoring column in 48 career games... Senior Tomas Vazquez-Simmons had a game-high eight rebounds in the victory for Canisius.