Interior defense continued to be troublesome for the Albert Lea girls’ basketball team Tuesday night in a 61-50 loss to Austin at Albert Lea High School.

The Tigers (7-13, 4-9) couldn’t match the Packers’ physicality and size inside on defense and it led to trouble quickly.

Rebekah Aase scored 14 points and had 10 rebounds for Austin (14-5, 10-3), including six offensive rebounds on a night where the 6-foot-2 center dominated Albert Lea in the paint.

“We’re still learning how to be physical,” Tigers head coach Sean Gillam said. “I think we’re better there, but we’re not good enough yet.”

The Packers tallied 25 offensive rebounds in the game and got many of their buckets from offensive rebounds against Albert Lea.

After a brutal first half where both teams shot worse than 27 percent from the field the Tigers were able to take a brief 29-28 lead with 13 minutes, 30 seconds left to play in the game.

Morgan Stadheim led the comeback effort, scoring eight of Albert Lea’s first nine points in the second half to close to with one point, but Austin was too strong inside and the Tigers failed to collect rebounds on the defensive end.

“The glass killed us,” Gillam said. “We have to rebound. We could have done a lot better than that.”

Austin later went on a 12-3 run with less than 6 minutes to play and took a 51-38 lead that Albert Lea couldn’t crawl out from under.

With Aase cleaning up down low, Tina Vorpahl was able to slash through the lane for easy layups, finishing with 14 points.

The Packers finished the second half shooting 42 percent from the field and hit 10-of-11 free throws to close the game out.

Austin threw multiple defensive looks at the Tigers Tuesday night, including an effective press during the first half. Albert Lea committed 23 turnovers in the game and the Packers scored 17 points directly off turnovers.

Stadheim finished with 17 points on 8-for-16 shooting to lead the Tigers and Abbey Arends had 15 in the loss.

Austin 61, Albert Lea 50

Austin 21 40 — 61

Albert Lea 17 33 — 50

Austin scoring: Rebekah Aase 14, Tina Vorpahl 14, Kathryn Gavin 11, Krista Viehauser 8, Bri Mayer 8, Hanna Middlebrook 3, Whitney Heiny 2, Jolene Brody 1.

Albert Lea scoring: Morgan Stadheim 17, Abbey Arends 15, Katie Schou 8, Alyssa Sager 5, Nichelle Klatt 3, Skyler Anderson 2.