Though the game will never officially count, in Trevor Lawrence’s mind the loss in the Orange & White Game on April 6 does.

“I’m irritated that I lost that game,” said the rising sophomore. “I’m going to have to sit on that until fall camp, so that is kind of irritating.”

Lawrence’s response to his Orange team’s loss is a great example of the kind of competitor he is. It does matter if it is a national championship game or a spring game, he always wants to win.

That explains why his high school teams in Cartersville, Ga., went 52-2 in his 54 career starts. It explains why he went 11-0 last year as a starter, the first freshman quarterback to ever do that at Clemson.

“We were talking (smack) before the game, just joking around, but everybody wants to win,” Lawrence said. “This team is full of winners. It is important to everyone. Even though it was just a spring game, and it was an intrasquad (scrimmage), everybody wants to win. It is still a big deal.”

The possibility of losing a game is not something Lawrence accepts. Lawrence is a winner and he brings that mentality with him to every game and, of course, it rubs off on his teammates, who are as equally talented and competitive as he is.

“We got some great players on both sides of the ball. So, I’m excited,” Lawrence said.

On offense, Lawrence has all the weapons in the world a quarterback can want. He has four seniors returning on the offensive line. He returns wide receivers Tee Higgins and Justyn Ross. He has the ACC Player of the Year at running back in Travis Etienne as well as a cast of other talented players such as running backs Tavien Feaster and Lyn-J Dixon and receivers Diondre Overton, Cornell Powell, T.J. Chase, Joseph Ngata and Frank Ladson.

“I just feel like we keep reloading,” Lawrence said. “We lost some good guys that we had on the team last year that graduated, and we have some more good ones this year. Obviously, it is a little different not having Hunter (Renfrow) and a couple of those guys out there, but we made some adjustments. We have great players and we will fill in spots.

“Amari (Rodgers) was having a great spring until he got hurt, but he will be back. We are excited for that. We have a bunch of great players. We will be fine.”

And more importantly Clemson has Trevor Lawrence.