MADISON, Wis. - The No. 22 Wisconsin Badgers (6-1) will kick off their Big Ten scheduled on Friday night when they take on No. 14 Iowa (6-0) at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, looking to add another quality win to their resume. A few news and notes you need to know before the game tips off at 7:00 p.m. CST are included below.

Sophomore forward Aleem Ford was impressing his teammates and coaches with his more versatile game in the run up to Wisconsin's 2018-19 season, but Ford's debut was put on an indefinite hold on Oct. 31 when the Badgers announced that he needed surgery on his knee to repair a pre-season injury.

But in the end Ford only missed Wisconsin's first three games - and was back on the court in a limited role for the Badgers three weeks after his surgery. Ford played in all three of Wisconsin's games during the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, playing in seven minutes against Stanford, four minutes against Oklahoma and three minutes against Virginia. Ford only managed to grab a couple of rebounds and didn't score any points - but he said after practice on Wednesday that he was just glad to get back on the court even if he wasn't at full strength.

"I didn't have too much preparation before I went out there," Ford said on Wednesday. "It was just good to get back out there and get my feet wet before Big Ten play comes around. I felt a little behind - it just felt a little weird (to) dive right in to the swing of things. But I definitely feel a lot more comfortable now."

Ford started fully participating in practice after the Badgers returned to Madison from the Bahamas, and he had a bit of a breakout game on Tuesday night in Wisconsin's come-from-behind win over N.C. State - scoring 12 points on 4-of-7 shooting from behind the three-point line in 21 minutes on the court. And now that he is another week removed from his knee injury, Ford said he's feeling like the player he expected to be this season after a lot of hard work in the offseason.

"I feel like a different player," Ford said. "I still have a lot to work on defensively and with my movement, but those two practices that I was able to get in under my belt definitely helped."

The Badgers pulled off a come-from-behind 79-75 win over N.C. State on Tuesday night at the Kohl Center - a feat the players said after the game they felt they would not have been able to do last year, particularly early in the year when they struggled in the opening stages of Big Ten play. But they had enough playmakers to keep hope alive even as N.C. State responded to most of their second-half runs, and the Badgers think they can learn a lot from coming out on top of a game that went down to the wire.

"That won't be our last tight game of the season," redshirt freshman guard Kobe King said Wednesday. "Just learning how to come together as a group - that was a gritty win for us. We were down 90 percent of the game, maybe more, and to come out on top was really big and shows what we can do together."

King said the mental part of the game was an obstacle to overcome by itself, after the Badgers watched N.C. State's shooters hit three-pointers or drive to the hoop to cut off any UW runs before they could take the lead.

'It just takes a mental toll on you, but we really stuck together and got the job done so it was good for us," King said.

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John Veldhuis covers Wisconsin football, basketball and recruiting for BadgerBlitz.com on the Rivals.com network. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnVeldhuis.