Improvement on top of MHS to-do list in 2026

By Chris Villani

Third-year head coach Dana Olson has led a couple of veteran-driven Milford High boys’ basketball teams. This winter, with a newer cast of characters leading the way, Olson feels like this team is definitively “his.”

“This year, we have a lot of guys who don’t really know anybody but me and my staff,” Olson said. “The first two years, we made the state tournament, we hovered around .500. Now that slate is wiped clean and we really start building this thing from the inside out.”

Junior captain Matt DaSilva returns as MHS’ most experienced player and Olson said the team will look to him for scoring.

“He just keeps getting better from a leadership standpoint,” the coach said. “He is one of our scorers and a kid who played a ton of varsity minutes as a sophomore. We are going to count on him to make some shots.”

Ryan Burns, a 6-foot-4 forward, saw some time off the bench a season ago but is playing a bigger role this winter as a captain. Milford’s third captain, Jason Stokes, returned to the court this winter after not playing last year.

“He is a good football and lacrosse player,” Olson noted. “We are going to be counting on him to be one of our better defenders.”

Junior Manny Vilbrun is back after seeing time as a sophomore and the lengthy, 6-foot-4 forward is in the starting lineup for the Scarlet Hawks. 

At point guard, Milford has sophomore Cody Geoffroy. “He is a good player,” Olson said. “These are his first varsity minutes, so he is going to keep getting better.”

Improvement is the watchword for MHS this season after graduating most of its starters from a senior-heavy playoff team in 2025.

“This is kind of like hitting the reset button and digging in and starting to build the foundation with this program,” Olson said. “The goals are just to play better every time we go out, to just be a little bit better than the day before.”

Milford suffered some setbacks early on in the season, but Olson said he is confident that the wins will come, noting that several of MHS’ early losses were close games that a more experienced team might have found a way to win.

“A lot of these kids are getting their first taste of varsity basketball,” he said. “Sometimes it looks really good, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Milford boys basketball has a young team that is looking to get better this winter. Source: Instagram, Peter Boucher @hawknationad