The 2009–10 Penn State Nittany Lions basketball team represented Pennsylvania State University. Head Coach Ed DeChellis was in his seventh season with the team. The team played its home games in University Park, Pennsylvania at the Bryce Jordan Center, which has a capacity of 15,000, for the twelfth consecutive season. This season marked team's the seventeenth consecutive season as a member of the Big Ten Conference. The Nittany Lions entered the season as the defending NIT champions.

The ACC–Big Ten Challenge was an in-season NCAA Division I men's college basketball series that matched up teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Big Ten Conference (B1G). ESPN was a key part of the creation of the challenge and held the broadcast rights to all the games. The ACC–Big Ten Challenge occurred early in the non-conference season, typically around late November/early December. Each game was hosted by one of the participating schools, with teams typically alternating home and away status in each successive year.