Benton Central entered Friday night's home opener against Delphi with a clear offensive game plan: Pound the ball inside in order to benefit from its significant size advantage.

The rugged Bison were able to execute it to perfection during a 68-47 triumph against the smaller, younger and less experienced Oracles in the Hoosier Conference opener for both teams.

The traditionally-tough Class 3A Bison (3-2) used size, strength and experience to pummel Delphi in the paint with a talented senior frontline of 6'4" Taylor Schoen, 6'5" Mitchell Borgman and 6'3" Jordan Brier.

Bookend post players Schoen and Borgman combined for 38 points on 15-of- 20 shooting (.750 percent) from the field, most on size mismatches underneath, in helping Benton Central outrebound the Oracles 26-18.

The huskier Bison also put a veteran team on the floor, starting three seniors and two juniors, in contrast to Delphi, still hurting without the services of junior Justin Snider, which usually starts two sophomores, two juniors and a senior, with only one of them measuring above 6'0".

Delphi head coach Brian Tonsoni rebuffs the opportunity to use the obvious onpaper disparities as a justification as he continues to look for areas of improvement for this year's team.

"We must keep digging deep to find ways to guard the post area," he said. "We are making improvements but they have not been big enough for us to win."

"Right now, one area gets better and another falls short....in this game we took care of the ball better and had 14 assists to 13 turnovers but we did not execute our post defense at all," Tonsoni added. "We need to improve our focus and concentration in all areas for us to change the results."

Indeed, not all was bad for the Oracles, along with the season-best-tying efforts in both assists and turnovers, Delphi shot well for the second game in-a-row from behind the three-point line (6-of-14, .429 percent) and was decent from the charitystripe (9-of-13, .692 percent).

But it was not enough to overcome the Bison, who shot .613 percent overall (27-of- 44) and .718 percent (23-of- 32) from inside of the three-point arc, while committing just six turnovers.

Delphi jumped out to an early 6-4 lead with baskets from Tanner Cripe, Kris Bender and Dustin Salyer. BC's shadowing defense took the Oracles away from their offensive game and allowed for the Bison to go on a 10-0 run to close the first quarter with an 18-8 lead.

The Bison opened a 17- point lead at 31-14 before Austin Hawn scored his first bucket with 3:30 remaining in the period en route to a 38-21 halftime margin, that was extended to 54-33 at the end of the third quarter.

Delphi was able to drain some open jump shots in the final ten minutes of the game and played an even fourth quarter to keep the Bison from widening the final margin of victory.

Hawn led the Oracles with 21 points, including 5-of-10 from beyond the arc, while Salyer added 11 points and a team-high seven rebounds.

Cripe finished with six points; Paul Zink added four, Matt Brown three and Bender two.

Delphi (0-5) has now lost 17 games in-a-row to Benton Central, last defeating the Bison during the 1988-89 campaign.

Delphi will play its final two games before Christmas break on the road this weekend - at Clinton Prairie on Friday night with the JV starting at 6:30 and at Tri-County on Saturday with the JV tip-off at 6.

JV loses tough one

Tyler Smith led the Delphi JV (2-3) with eight points in its 38-27 loss at Benton Central. Jordan Wagner added 7 points, Karson Bender and Brown scored 4 apiece and Cole Whitaker had 3.