Update: If you haven’t already seen it, check out Jason King’s in-depth, behind-the-scenes story on John Wall
I talked about John Wall’s reaction to not getting a scholarship offer from North Carolina, is hometown school, in a post yesterday.
On Friday, UNC head coach Roy Williams held a news conference and briefly touched on the Wall situation. Williams, a two-time national championship coach with the Tar Heels, said there are some things in the recruiting world that should stay private, one of them being the recruitment of Wall.
“I had a conversation with John,” Williams said. “We visited and a couple of things happened immediately after that, that made me make the decision not to go any farther.”
Williams didn’t elaborate any farther than that, but he did go into pretty good detail in his praise of Wall on the court, comparing the first-year UK guard to one of the all-time NBA greats.
“I loved him as a player,” Williams said. “I’ve been on record as saying that I thought he was the best point guard prospect I’ve seen in high school basketball since Jason Kidd. I thought he would have been a great player for us, but things just didn’t fit. Some shoes don’t fit.”
Williams called the recruiting process a difficult scenario because he “loved (Wall) to death,” but things didn’t work out.
Asked what he liked about Wall when he was recruiting him, Williams said, “everything.”
“He’s a 6-4 point guard, he’s fast as you can possibly be — the closest thing I had seen to the speed that Ty Lawson pushed the ball with,” Williams said. “He’s vicious defensively. He’s going to get better and better at shooting.”
UNC senior guard Marcus Ginyard will likely get some time guarding Wall, Williams said, but he made sure to point out that UK has more players to worry about than just Wall.
“It’s not just John Wall,” Williams said. “(It’s) John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, (DeMarcus) Cousins. Patrick Patterson is still a big load for them. They’re a basketball team. John is a big-time star that is willing to make big-time plays.”
