Before the Southeastern Conference Championships, Edrick Floreal and his Kentucky coaching staff sketched out how they expected the meet to go. They went event by event, assigning points based on how they thought each athlete would perform.Then the athletes had a choice. They could either hear how many points they were expected to score or go into the weekend blind.The former option, in Floreal’s eyes, was the better one.”You’ve gotta be able to embrace that pressure,” Floreal said. “When somebody tells me, ‘I don’t want to know what you expect from me,’ that’s not very good. I want them to make the decision.”For senior discus thrower Andrew Evans, the decision was easy. “The team has expectations of us,” Evans said. “They asked us if we wanted to know what expectations they had for us in points and discus was (to score) 10 (points). So I knew they wanted me to get it done.”And get it done he did. Evans won the second SEC title of his career, turning in a throw of 64.09 meters/210-3 on his final attempt in front of a large crowd there to watch a loaded discus final.”We initially had the throwing set up on the infield, which is kind of absent the crowd right on top of you,” Evans said. “Then we moved it to the outside throwing facility where everybody’s right on top of you and expectations are right on top of you as well.”His coach’s expectations were far from the only ones Evans had to shoulder competing Saturday in front of his home fans.Just two weeks ago, Evans won National Athlete of the Week honors after his throw of 66.37m/217-9 at the Tennessee Challenge. The mark is the best in the NCAA this season and third best in the world this year, but brought with it the pressure to back up that “magical moment,” as Floreal called it.”You have to be able to perform when people expect you to do it,” Floreal said. “I’m really happy that Andrew was able to get it done with all the pressure. Everybody that was over there, they expected one thing: Andrew Evans to win the discus. And he fought off the demons and delivered the goods in a big way.”Emerging atop a field that featured three of the top four throwers in the country, Evans received his gold medal from former discus national champion and UK alum Rashaud Scott. With his nation-leading throw two weeks ago, Evans took over the school record from Scott, who graduated in 2009.”Rashaud and I are good pals,” Evans said. “He let me have it when I took his record, so we just kind of go back and forth.”Scott started a streak of five consecutive SEC discus titles for UK athletes in 2008, a streak Evans continued in 2012 but ended a year ago when he finished second. In his final home meet, Evans is happy to restart the streak and continue a Wildcat tradition.”It feels good to win again and bring it back to Kentucky, because Kentucky is such a storied discus school,” Evans said. “Hopefully we can use my results to bring in big discus recruits to keep making the program better.”If his younger teammates can mimic the way Evans handles the weight of expectations, UK track and field will continue to blossom under Floreal.”Being counted on, that’s good,” Floreal said. “You don’t want to not exist. Nobody expects anything from you, who wants to live that life? I want a life where I know that people expect stuff from me. We expect you to do something here.””My interest is having people around me that they are OK with that, they can live with that, they can stand up under it and be OK with the outcome.”Delivering when he was supposed to, Evans became UK’s first 2014 SEC outdoor champion. Behind him, UK is fifth with 21 points in men’s standings through three days, while the women are currently in ninth with 13.It wasn’t an ideal day — Floreal said Saturday started without the “zeal” the Wildcats had on Friday — but it was another step in the growth of a program.”Like I always say, character is not what happens, but it’s what happens after you get your butt kicked,” Floreal said. “We lost some points, but we’re going to be OK. In the end, we’re still in a building stage trying to put ourselves in position. And I think we’re a contender, but we’re not there yet. We’ve still got some stuff we’ve gotta figure out. We still gotta get a little bit tougher, a little bit grittier.”