John Wall is a 6-foot-4 senior point guard from Raleigh's Word of God High School. He just happens to possess the greatest ability to make a major impact at the collegiate level this fall of any recruit in the nation, if, that is, he ever makes it to a campus.

His combination of quickness, jumping ability, passing skills and general feel for the game is staggering.

Unfortunately for Wall and fans alike, WRAL reported on Monday that Wall had been cited by the Raleigh Police in a break-in. This is just the latest in the wildest and woolliest recruiting story of the year in college basketball.

Players of this magnitude are almost never available in the spring. Unlike football, in which players come down to the wire each February (or further if one uses Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor, who declined to sign on signing day, as an example), basketball players are committing in their sophomore seasons of high school. Plus, basketball has an early signing period in November, when nearly all the top seniors make that faithful commitment with pen in hand.

Wall has taken a different route. He is still trying to decide where he will play. A big reason he is still available is Carolina's Roy Williams has been the one coach in the country to say no (or possibly maybe if certain criteria are met) to Wall, and UNC just happens to be Wall's dream school.

Wall made what is now a famous phone call to Williams before the Final Four. Supposedly, it was short. The call did not settle anything, but it did stir a boiling cauldron of speculation.

Then when Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington announced they were leaving Carolina for the National Basketball Association, a reporter asked Williams if he planned to use the scholarship that had just become available. (Twelve are accounted for by the returning players and incoming freshmen.)

Williams never mentioned Wall as he is not allowed to talk about unsigned players specifically, but the reference was obvious. Williams kept his options open by saying he would just have to wait and see what happened with the 13th scholarship.

Throw a couple of logs on the fire. Now mix in three of the elite programs in the history of the game for spice, and we have one beefy stew going.

Were John Calipari still at Memphis, there is a chance this might all be a moot point by now. Calipari has gone after Wall hard for a long time. Wall apparently liked Memphis well enough, but then Calipari left for Kentucky and Wall decided to pursue UNC.

Nevertheless, the Wildcats are in this sweepstakes, along with Duke, and maybe Carolina. Williams' big issue with Wall had always been Brian Clifton, a would-be sports agent who coaches Wall's club team.

Who knows, perhaps Duke's presence is the only reason Williams has even considered Wall, assuming he has, and that assumption is a leap of faith.

Williams does not care for Clifton, and Clifton is on the record as not caring at all for Williams. Clifton said something to the effect that Williams is a bad person.

The other factor in this mix, before the latest news of the incident, is the possibility that Wall might still need to qualify academically. Whether Wall has the necessary board score to be eligible as a freshman is not a matter of public record.

The citation could be. And that could be enough to make Williams say thanks but no thanks. Given that will probably end Duke's interest, if it has not already waned, the Blue Devils saying no thanks might make it even easier for UNC walk away.

Kentucky, well, who knows? The Wildcats might not care if Wall arrived in Lexington with his ball on the end of a chain, but the test score would be another issue. That one is dictated by the NCAA.

By the time this thing is said and done, Wall might just be one of those who hears his name called in the first round of the NBA draft in June. He meets the age requirement of 19, so he could challenge the rule that states a player must have a year of separation from his high-school class because Wall spent an extra year in high school. (Talk about a can of worms; of course, that might be the perfect ingredient to add to this stew if kids started staying in high school an extra year to enter the draft.)

Wall could also wind up as the chief recruit for one of Europe's top professional teams. It's just getting harder to say at a time when we thought we would know.

Eddy Landreth can be reached at chnsports@nando.com