The 2010 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involved 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball as a culmination of the 2009–10 basketball season. It began on March 16, 2010, and concluded with Duke defeating Butler 61–59 in the championship game on April 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, to become champion. It was the first Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium; the RCA Dome and Market Square Arena hosted past Final Fours when the event was held in Indianapolis.

When Duke and Butler played each other in the tournament final, it was the first title game between private universities in 25 years (Villanova and Georgetown met in 1985), and the fifth such matchup in history (1942, 1954, and 1955 having been the other years).

A total of 65 teams were selected for the tournament. Thirty of the teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments. The automatic bid of the Ivy League, which does not conduct a postseason tournament, went to Cornell, its regular season champion. The remaining 34 teams were granted at-large bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.

Basketball tournament is a series of contests involving a relatively large number of competitors. A number of basketball teams compete and the one that prevails through the final round or that finishes with the best record is declared the winner.

The term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: (a) One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval. (b) A competition involving multiple matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches.

A famous form of basketball tournaments are the NCAA basketball tournaments men and women for Divisions I, II and III.