TEMPE - Arizona State University track and field head coach Greg Kraft has been named as the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation's Men's Coach of the Year for the 2012 season, as announced by the MPSF on Friday.

Kraft is in his 16th year with the Sun Devil program and has built it into a national power. The Arizona State men dominated the MPSF Indoor Championships, scoring 131.5 points with a 50-point margin of victory, as the team won its first MPSF title in school history. The point total and margin of victory were the most in the past decade of competition at the event. 

For Kraft, it was the third time in his career that he has earned an MPSF Coach of the Year award but only the first with the men's team.  Kraft earned the honor with the ASU women in 2007 and 2008. 

The ASU men tallied five individual conference victors and currently have eight student-athletes and two relays ranked in the top-20 nationally,  with the NCAA Championships on the horizon. 

Third-ranked Chris Benard set the new MPSF Championship record in the triple jump (53'-11"), taking down what was then one of the longest standing records in the conference at 17 years old.  Kraft is the personal coach of Benard as well and also saw him take second in the long jump with a new career best at the event 

Kraft also coached Bryan McBride to point-scoring efforts in the long jump, triple jump and high jump events. Early this year, McBride tied the indoor school record in the high jump, a mark that had stood untouched for 30 years. 

In 2008, Kraft's men and women captured the NCAA Indoor Championships, only the second time in the history of the event that the same school swept both titles. 

The Arizona State men are currently ranked seventh in the nation and have their sights set on a strong run through the NCAA Indoor Championships, set to take place in Boise, Idaho, on March 16-17.