After dramatically reshaping his conference by gobbling up four Pac-12 schools to get to 16 in 2024, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark says the league is taking a breather — at least for now.

“Right now, we’re done,” Yormark told The Arizona Republic. “We had a vision. We had a strategy and effectively we’ve been able to execute it. Initially, I wasn’t sure if we’d go to 14 or 16. I think 16 was kind of a dream scenario.”

While there had been rumors that the Big 12 would continue to target Connecticut and Gonzaga as basketball-only schools, Yormark confirmed that won’t happen, either.

“Those conversations are no longer,” Yormark told The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast. “Unfortunately things didn’t work out only because the dream scenario (of adding Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State & Utah) unfolded for us.”

That spells good news for the Big East, which has remained an island of stability amid the storm of realignment. UConn, which in April won its fifth NCAA men’s basketball championship and first under coach Dan Hurley, will seemingly remain in the Big East for the time being. The league is expected to be loaded this year, with as many as five teams in various preseason Top 25 polls.

“In 40-plus years, teams have changed but the Big East model that Dave Gavitt built has remained intact,” Rick Pitino, who has led five programs to the NCAA Tournament and three to the Final Four, told NJ Advance Media this month. “Playoffs at Madison Square Garden, it’s been traditionally a Catholic-school league except for Butler and UConn and it has not looked to expand.

“It’s a basketball league, so change is not being altered in the Big East and it’s a wonderful thing.”

As for the Big 12, it has rebounded very nicely after losing Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC starting next year. Yormark last fall negotiated a reported six-year, $2.28 billion contract extension with ESPN and Fox that will pay Colorado $32 million per year,

This summer, the Big 12 plucked the so-called “Four Corner” schools — Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah — from the Pac-12, a league which has collapsed virtually overnight and now has just four schools.

“So from our perspective, our focus now is to integrate the four incoming schools as quickly as we can,” Yormark said. “Get them comfortable. We feel really good about our future and what our membership composition looks like when you look at it in terms of where we were and where we are and where we’re going.”

Beginning with the 2024-25 academic year, the Big 12 will be comprised of 16 members - Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, Utah and West Virginia.

In September 2021, former Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby negotiated the additions of BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston after the departures of Texas and Oklahoma.

The additions now of four former Pac-12 schools “just gives us stability,” one Big 12 basketball coach said.

“A year and a half ago, we were the league that everybody thought was going to be kind of picked apart and it turned out to be the Pac-12 and that’s pretty remarkable,” the coach added

The Big Ten, meantime, will move to 18 teams next year with the additions of Oregon and Washington along with UCLA and USC.