Days 240-241: January 26-27, 2013

What better day than 10 days before the due date to begin working on moot court brief number two? I mean, it's not like I need that much time to work on it. The one (and most important) thing I learned from all the time we spent working on it last fall is how little it matters. Spend as much time on it as you want, but it sure isn't going to get you an A. In anything. But, on the bright side, it is much funner and less stressful when you actually don't care about it and do things like cite Green Bag! (See, e.g., http://bit.ly/QjCrQ1). Also, the moot court board has changed to must more positive things like Little 5, rather than brief due dates. Even though I don't think the countdown has been updated from 90 in quite a while (probably about as often as I've updated my brief). Finally, I enjoy the I-Jiggles commemoration of moot court participants in the bottom left corner of the picture. I enjoy the fact that the world is covering up the majority of the announcement, because it is symbolic of the things that are more important than moot court round two for me: all the things in the world. And THAT is global!

Disclaimer: I should add that despite my satiric attitude, moot court is very important for those who are interested in the competition, are interested in appellate advocacy, or are pursuing a career in an area of law where that form of advocacy will be relevant. But, for those who merely wanted to build public speaking/advocacy skills, strengthen an area of weakness, and for which three rounds of argument was sufficient to accomplish those goals, having to write another 30ish page brief to merely argue an additional one or two other times is not the most productive of tasks for an additional semester.

#13 Michigan State made the trip to Bloomington on Sunday to take on #8 Indiana at Assembly Hall. It was a huge top-15 Big Ten matchup I went over to Nick's with Anita to watch her Spartans take on our Hoosiers in the nationally televised Sunday afternoon game. It was odd watching an Indiana home game in Bloomington and not at Assembly Hall, but I did not have tickets to this one. It was an impressive game on both sides, neck-and-neck the entire way, with Indiana managing to hang on to its early lead throughout despite a strong effort and a huge inside presence by Michigan State. It was good to see Indiana play tough in a close game and pull out a win. That is definitely something we are going to need to keep up if we are going to compete down the stretch in the Big Ten and in the NCAA tournament. Victor Oladipo was a star as usual, and Cody Zeller managed to assert himself down the stretch, but he needs to step it up and play stronger from start to finish. Hopefully we will be able to handle another road matchup on Wednesday against Purdue, because next Saturday soon-to-be #1 ranked Michigan will be coming to town to be featured on the ESPN College GameDay Spectacular that will be a possible top-five matchup at Assembly Hall!