Rule question from coach

[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by BlueDevilRef

It was still around when I was in school and I'm now 36.

Really?? I'm almost positive that it hasn't been used since I've been officiating. (I started in '92).

Can someone enlighten us to what the purpose of it was?

It's for jump balls. If there was a held ball in the free throw lane, for example, there was no AP arrow, so they had a jump ball. And rather going to center court, they would have the jump ball in the circle around the free throw line.

But the Alternating Possession procedure has been around -- I think -- since I started officiating in '92. So if you had the dotted semi-circle, it was just because your high school was too cheap to re-paint your court.