North Sutton, n.h. — It wasn’t that long ago that Kearsarge boys basketball coach Nate Camp was worrying about his job. The losses were piling up and the fan base was getting restless.

Not anymore.

With Tuesday’s convincing 58-41 win over Stevens, the Cougars held their grip on second place in New Hampshire Division III, and nobody is talking about a coaching change as the Cougars (13-2) are on an 11-game winning streak. And Kearsarge is doing this with just one senior.

Also, Tuesday’s win didn’t come against a cupcake: it came against a Stevens team (12-3) that beat Kearsarge 71-66 on opening night and came into the game in third place.

While it appears that both teams have a good chance of getting a home game in the first round of the D-III playoffs, there are 10 teams — going into Tuesday — with four losses or less.

For three quarters, this was a scrap, with Stevens leading 26-25 going into the final eight minutes.

Then boom. Kearsarge, with greater depth that the Cardinals, scored the first 16 points in the fourth, and the game was over.

“They were making their shots and we were missing them,” Stevens coach Matt Baird-Torney said.

There were some other things as well, particularly a Kearsarge defense that made life miserable for the Stevens ballhandlers.

“We just wanted to challenge them,” Camp said.

Kearsarge got a big game from junior sharpshooter Tom Johnson, who had 14 points in the second half and 20 on the night.

Also playing a key role was 6-foot-7 center Tyler Mattos, who clogged up the middle, forced the Cardinals to alter their shots and showed his agility by stealing a pass at the top of the key and beating the defense down the floor for the easy basket.

Baird-Torney said he didn’t do anything special against the taller Mattos. “We just played him straight up,” he said.

What Baird-Torney would have like to have seen was what he called help defense.

“When we see a shooter with the ball we have to know what guys we can break away from their man and help defend their shooter,” he said. “We didn’t do enough of that tonight.”

Stevens didn’t make a free throw on the night, going 0-for-3, while Kearsarge was 9-for-14.

The Cardinals stayed in the game as long as they did because they answered the Cougars basket for basket early on in a game that looked like it would go right down to crunch time.

At the start of the fourth quarter, Johnson got hot, making two quick baskets to start the spurt. Mattos had a put-back, drove the lane for two and made four free throws, and just like that, a close game turned into a rout.

“We’ll just have to regroup and get back at it on Friday,” Baird-Torney said of his team’s next game, at home against Newport. Next for Kearsarge is a Thursday home game with Conant.