CHESTNUT HILL - Had the chance to catch up with the staff and BOB for a bit at the 7-on-7 tourney Thursday.

The energy around there is still palpable and there's a legitimate belief that this is just the tip of the ice berg with the recruiting success. I spoke with DC Tim Lewis who said the captain's practices have been phenomenal and guys are really taking on leadership roles.

After this OV weekend the staff will be taking some much needed time off before the real grind starts.

Here's what O'Brien had to say in the 2-3 minutes I was able to get him on the record:

On the state of the program in general right now

"It's been a really good summer. We've had a lot of good work from our own players. We've worked out five times a week. We're able to work with them and they've gotten a lot done. It's really been a fun group to work with. I can't wait for training camp to start, but we've got to get through this summer and a few more workouts. We've had a lot of camps here plus this 7-on-7 we had here today. We had four other camps where we had between 175-200 kids and then yesterday we had a camp with about 300 kids. We've gotten a lot of kids through here. I think the big thing is we coach the camp. BC coaches coach the camp, so I think it's worth everybody's time to send their sons to our camp because they're going to get good coaching."

On the hot stretch recruiting and the importance fo balancing national and local

"Recruiting in some ways will be the lifeline of the program. So, we work at it every day. We recruit every day. We recruit 365 days a year. We definitely want to recruit locally. Hopefully, we can show the local guys that we play good football and coach good football here. We feel like we're really doing a good job of recruiting, we've just got to keep it going. We've got to keep working at it and I think if we do that, guys will keep coming on board."

On what these next few weeks look like schedule wise for staff and players before training camp:

"There will be coaches in and out during July. We all need some breaks. The players will have a break 4th of July week and then they'll have a break right before training camp starts. Everybody needs a break, but we'll be around a lot too. It's a busy time in the fact that we have our guys working here and there's still some prospects around. We'll take our breaks when we can, but it's a full time job here."