Basketball, as one of the most popular sports courses in Chinese colleges and universities, has always been taught in a traditional ball teaching method, which has caused many problems in students' learning effects, such as poor basketball tactics, weaker physical fitness and so on. Therefore, it is imperative to reform the basketball courses in colleges and universities. Accordingly, this paper is aimed to explore the effects of the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU) method in basketball courses on male students from the Class of 2023, a university in Shanghai, China, in terms of their basketball tactics and physical fitness. The study sampled 60 students randomly selected from 1850 students who took the optional basketball courses. The selected students were divided into two classes, either with 30 students: the experimental classes taught with the TGFU method and the control class taught with the traditional method. The data were collected from the pre-tests and post-tests of both classes and analyzed by the tool Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS 24.0). Including the calculation of average values and standard deviation for T-test. It is found that the TGFU adopted in the basketball courses has significantly improved students' basketball tactics and physical fitness, and that this method is advised to apply in college courses for students of all grades.