A national championship at the highest level of men's college basketball, currently NCAA Division I, is a designation awarded annually to the best college basketball team in the United States. The national championship is currently won by the champion of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, a single-elimination tournament played to determine the men's Division I basketball champion. The NCAA tournament was first played in 1939, 40 to 50 years after the first college basketball games in the 1890s following the game's invention by James Naismith.
Prior to the establishment and sustained success of the annual NCAA tournament, the national collegiate basketball title was considered a "mythical national championship".