With a redshirt, here is how this player ended up. It took forever and he never truly developed.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/RatingsHistory.aspx?tid=2848&pid=2977337

At DIII, I think he contributed.

He was still black in : speed, rebonding, defense, lowpost, perimeter, ballhandling, passing... Was blue in all these categories when he started.

The problem is that, even with two seasons as the starter, he only grew 12 points in WE.

I'd still would recruit that player because he had the core stats right at the start.

I have another player, redshirted, that had all blue statistics, but he did not have the core stats and he has yet to be good for my team. I will see in two seasons how it ends up.

I never recruit a player under 20 WE unless I can start him right away as a freshman. Usually this in the first season or two of taking over a new team that is in a big rebuilding process. That player of yours because of his good Ath and Def was definitely a contributor.

I took a 10 WE player in the first year of a D3 re-build and he really helped me. It was a 6 person class and the team made the Final 4 when they were seniors.
The other 5 were really good in Ath and Def but none of them could score as freshman. So I took a SG with 10 WE that was an 81 Per player. I started him every game the first two seasons and he played 25 minutes a game. His WE went up 4 points each of those seasons. He started as a junior and his WE went up 5 points. By his senior year I had recruited a better all around SG and he was the back-up and only played 12 minutes and game and his WE went up 2 points.

He helped me immensely. He wound up as the school's all time leading scorer with 1927 points. Though he wasn't much help on the Final 4 team--I won a lot of games in his early years that I would not have won without him. This helped out my prestige and led me to be able to get better recruits that contributed on the Final 4 team and helped me out in later seasons.

I still look for players like this with low WE's in the first year of a re-build.

A bit part of getting those low WE guys to develop is getting them starts; 35 starts in 4 years (after a R/S season) seriously definitely hindered his development.  

I don't have starting or ending values anymore, but at D3 I took a big with a starting WE of 18 and was committed to starting him for 4 seasons (he rejected the R/S prior to his FR and SO seasons).  He finished around 75 ath, 90 reb, 70 def, 90 lp, 75 sb; never was able to really develop his BH or P, but those cores are excellent for D3 in m2m.  You've just gotta be more committed to starting those guys consistently over 4 seasons if you expect them to at least max out in their cores.

In comparison:

Patrick Williams

Still blue in reb/per black in spd/def/bh/pas

Henrey Lucero

Blue in reb/per black in spd/def/bh/pas

both contributed a lot last season especially Williams

I just signed a guy that is pretty similar with good starting cores and low WE of 13. 

https://www.whatifsports.com/hd/RecruitProfile/Ratings.aspx?rid=3478831

My plan is to throw a RS on him and then start for 4 years. He's high Defense, BH and High high in SPD, Passing. Average Stam but low everywhere else. 

I'll report back in with results!