KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Mike Boynton remembers vividly his first season leading Oklahoma State.

He was just 35 at the time. Never been a head coach at any level, much less at a Power Five program. And with just one year on the Cowboys’ bench as an assistant, Boynton was picked to replace Brad Underwood and guide Oklahoma State through the Big 12, which has historically been one of the toughest conferences in college basketball.

“The competition is a real thing,” Boynton said with a shake of his head. “It’s been baptism by fire for me.”

Reminiscing about his own start in the Big 12 — the Cowboys were eighth in what was then a 10-team league in 2016-17 — got Boynton to thinking about the four coaches entering the league, and what BYU’s Mark Pope, Cincinnati coach Wes Miller, UCF’s Johnny Dawkins and Houston coach Kelvin Sampson are about to experience in the coming months.

“The new teams, all four this year and the ones we add moving forward, will just continue to elevate this conference above what I ever imagined would be one conference’s strength,” Boynton said during Big 12 media day Wednesday.

Sampson is actually returning to the Big 12 after a dozen years at Oklahoma, a stint that began when it was still the Big 8. The league he returns to is markedly different after the departure of Colorado, Texas A&M, Nebraska and Missouri in past years, and the addition of West Virginia and TCU along with the four newcomers this season.

Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado will further alter the Big 12 landscape when the Pac-12 schools arrive next year, and when longtime members Oklahoma and Texas depart for the SEC.

One thing has remained constant amid all the change: The Big 12’s standing as the nation’s dominant basketball league.

Other conferences have staked a claim over the years, including the ACC and Big East, but none can match the recent body of work the Big 12 has put together. Kansas and Baylor have won national championships two of the past three years, and Houston went to the Final Four when it was played in a COVID-19 bubble in Indianapolis.