DePaul and six other non-FBS /Big East schools made it official Saturday when their presidents unanimously announced their departure from the conference and plans to form their own basketball league.

Marquette, Georgetown, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova will join the Blue Demons in the new conference, exiting the Big East on June 30, 2015, according to a league source.

"We continued to monitor the landscape of what has gone on in college athletics," DePaul athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto said. "The Big East has had multiple changes and our presidents came to the conclusion that philosophically the collective best interest is to forge ahead and look at a model that begins anew with the seven of us."

The Big East bylaws require departing teams to give 27 months' notice but the league has negotiated early exits with other teams in the last year. Leaving as a group, the schools will not be hit with exit fees per current rules.

The statement from the seven teams did not give details about their departing plans, and Lenti Ponsetto said those details will be worked out over the upcoming months.

The main question will be which other teams join the "Catholic 7" as they have been dubbed.

Some reports mention Butler and Xavier leaving the Atlantic 10 along with Creighton, Dayton, Saint Louis and Virginia Commonwealth as candidates to make it a 10- or 12-team conference.

"I want the league to be something where there's great commonality among the institutions," Lenti Ponsetto said, who declined to name schools that would be targeted.

The Big East has been in turmoil for more than a year.

As more football-centric schools were added and Big East mainstays such as Pittsburgh and Syracuse announced their impending departures, the remaining teams began to question the conference's direction and identity.

Talks about exiting the Big East heated up in the "last couple of weeks," Lenti Ponsetto said.

"Under the current context of conference realignment, we believe pursuing a new basketball framework that builds on this tradition of excellence and competition is the best way forward," a statement the schools released read.

The Big East still will have a 12-team football conference next season with six new members, including Boise State and San Diego State for football only. Rutgers and Louisville, which both plan to leave the Big East, still are expected to compete in the conference next year.

Pittsburgh, Syracuse, West Virginia and Notre Dame also have severed ties with the conference.

The Big East has added Temple and is to welcome Houston, SMU, Memphis, Central Florida along with Boise State and San Diego State next season. Tulane and East Carolina are scheduled to join in 2014 and Navy in 2015.

"The 13 members of the conference are confident and united regarding our collective future," a Big East statement read. "We have a strong conference with respected national universities and are working together to forge the future. We have a variety of options and are looking forward with great partnership, collegiality and optimism."

The defections leave Connecticut, a founding member of the Big East in 1979, along with Cincinnati and South Florida with uncertain futures.