Big 12 Basketball: Introducing 4 new official members for 2023-24 season

In this age of super conferences and realignment, what Big 12 Basketball has been able to do on the basketball court over the last five years has been remarkable. The smallest of the power conferences with just 10 teams has landed a team in the Final Four every year from 2018 through 2022.

In those four seasons, the conference boasts two national champions and another that lost in the title game in overtime. Almost as remarkable as their accomplishments on the floor is the fact that in the world of teams changing conferences like a merry-go-round, the Big 12 has remained relatively stable.

Between 2011-2012 the conference lost Colorado to the Pac-12, Nebraska to the Big Ten, and the pair of Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC. Since then, the 10 holdovers remained the same until Texas and Oklahoma would leave for the SEC a year from now. As a result, the Big 12 welcomes four new members this month, their first new additions since 2012 when TCU and West Virginia joined.

In making these additions, the conference went coast-to-coast to find the right fit. In the end, they settled on three schools that had previously resided in the AAC and one from the WCC. How the new members will fit in remains to be seen. But on paper, the conference that arguably had all 10 members in the conversation for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament late in the process looks even stronger and deeper in 2023-24. Let’s take a look at the newest members of the Big 12 Conference.

The conference welcomes the team that has been the gold standard in the AAC since 2017, the Houston Cougars. Houston was a founding member of the AAC when there was a split from the Big East in 2013 and after six straight top-two finishes and five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, now move to the best conference in the country.