Blades,
I agree with you and even though Cobb picked up two very quick fouls, he should have played more than 3 minutes. Playing Larrier and Diarra at the 4 and 5 simply is not going to work. And he should be giving more minutes to the legit 5s we have, the 3 you mentioned, Onuorah, Cobb, and Carlton.
All 3 of those guys have shown flashes of effectiveness but they have been excessively foul prone and have not been able to sustain any consistent play. UConn also is not looking to get them going. Unfortunately because the last two games were close, dicy games UConn nearly lost, they really did not have the time to work on developing the games of these 3 in the low post.
I am encouraged by the play of Diarra the last 2 games but he is severely undersized and at best a 4 when coupled with one of the legit 3 above, NOT Larrier.
Larrier has been a big disappointment to me. He does not make a high % of what appear to me to be makeable shots. He does have a tendency to play "hero ball", as you say. I got a huge laugh out of King Rice's postgame comment that Monmouth deserved to lose because at the end they "tried to be heroes." UConn was guilty of the same and during the two 8 minute stretches of no FGs (two in one game!!!!!!!!!!) UConn got selfish and Larrier was a negative factor in those scoreless streaks.
They have a big problem with the Syracuse zone Tuesday because the way they have played is not at all effective against zone defenses. Larrier has the ability to get in the middle of the zone and knock down shots but those are the shots he has not consistently made and I saw this last night. Plus, although he had a couple of assists yesterday he is not a good passer. For UConn to have any shot against Cuse Larrier must play well and Vital has to make 5 to 7 3s.
Without Gilbert for the foreseeable future and maybe the rest of the year, I can see things going south quickly for this team. UConn was extremely fortunate to win the last two games. Honestly had the opponent played slightly better at the end of both games it would have been back to back home losses. Columbia and Monmouth simply did not execute well at the end of the games. It was not great D that caused that, it was more like self destruction. These are teams that are well below the general strength of the rest of the schedule. I am very disappointed and I continue to believe that Ollie's performance should be assessed at the end of this month and the AD needs to say whether he is happy with it or not.