The 2014–15 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began in November with the 2K Sports Classic and ended with the Final Four in Indianapolis April 4–6. Practices officially began on October 3.

• May 14 – The NCAA announces its Academic Progress Rate (APR) sanctions for the 2014–15 school year. A total of 36 programs in 11 sports are declared ineligible for postseason play due to failure to meet the required APR benchmark, including the following eight Division I men's basketball teams:^[1]
  • Alabama State
  • Appalachian State
  • Central Arkansas
  • Florida A&M
  • Houston Baptist
  • Lamar
  • Milwaukee
  • San Jose State
  • In addition to the above teams, the entire athletic program at Southern University, including the men's basketball team, is ineligible for postseason play due to failure to supply usable academic data to the NCAA.
• May 16 – The ACC and the SEC will use a 30-second shot clock during exhibition games on an experimental basis for the upcoming season.^[2][3]
• June 10 – Georgetown and Syracuse announce that their men's basketball rivalry, on hold since 2013 due to the Big East realignment, will resume in 2015–16. The initial contract will run for four seasons.^[4]
• November 3 – The AP preseason All-American team is named. North Carolina junior guard Marcus Paige is the leading vote-getter with 57 of 65 possible votes. Joining him on the team were Louisville junior forward Montrezl Harrell (56 votes), Wisconsin senior center Frank Kaminsky, Wichita State junior guard Fred VanVleet and Duke freshman center Jahlil Okafor. Okafor was also the preseason Player of the Year.^[5]
• November 13 – The NCAA announced five future Final Four sites which include Glendale, Arizona (2017), San Antonio (2018), Minneapolis (2019), Atlanta (2020), and Indianapolis (2021).^[6]
• December 6 – NJIT, the lone Independent in Division 1 basketball, upsets 17th-ranked Michigan.^[7]
• January 2 – Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin was placed in an advisory role to the team for the remainder of the season while dealing with a non-life-threatening vascular condition known as arterial dissection.^[8]
• February 3 – Turner Sports and CBS Sports announced that Bill Raftery and Grant Hill will replace Greg Anthony to call the 2015 NCAA tournament with the team of Jim Nantz and reporter Tracy Wolfson.^[9]
• February 4 – Syracuse announces that it has self-imposed a postseason ban in response to an ongoing NCAA investigation into infractions that occurred over much of the early 21st century.^[10]
• February 7 – Former North Carolina coach Dean Smith dies at his home in Chapel Hill at the age of 83.^[11]
• February 11 – Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian died at the age of 84.^[12]
• March 6 – The NCAA announced the results of its investigation of the Syracuse men's basketball and football programs, levying the following penalties on the basketball program:^[13][14]
  • A total of 108 wins in the 2004–05, 2005–06, 2006–07, 2010–11, and 2011–12 seasons were ordered vacated. This was the most wins ever taken away from a Division I men's program, and dropped Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim from second on the all-time Division I wins list to sixth.
  • Boeheim was initially suspended for the first nine games of the 2015–16 ACC season, which was later modified to the first 9 games immediately following the ruling of the NCAA Board of Appeals, beginning with the renewed rivalry game against The Georgetown University Hoyas ^[15]
  • The program initially lost three scholarships for each of the following four seasons (through 2018–19), later reduced to two per season following an appeal by the University to the NCAA.^[16]
  • Recruiting was restricted for two seasons, and the program was placed on probation for five years.
• March 18 – In the wake of the Syracuse sanctions, Boeheim announces that he will retire at the end of the 2017–18 season, with top assistant Mike Hopkins his planned successor. Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross announces his resignation, effective immediately.^[17]

The 2014–15 season saw the final wave of membership changes resulting from a major realignment of NCAA Division I conferences. The cycle began in 2010 with the Big Ten and the then-Pac-10 publicly announcing their intentions to expand. The fallout from these conferences' moves later affected a majority of D-I conferences.

This was also the final season for Texas–Pan American (UTPA) under that name. At the start of the 2015–16 school year, UTPA merged with the University of Texas at Brownsville to form the new University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). UTPA's athletic program and WAC membership were inherited by UTRGV.

It was also the final season for Northern Kentucky in the Atlantic Sun Conference (A-Sun) and the final season for NJIT as an independent. On May 11, 2015, it was announced that Northern Kentucky would join the Horizon League effective July 1.^[35] The A-Sun soon filled the place left by Northern Kentucky, announcing on June 12 that NJIT would become a member effective on July 1.^[36]