Moment #22: Waller’s Miracle Strip

Mike Waller gets a hero's welcome after the game 

With 5:37 left in their week seven game vs. Yale, the Lions faced a very tough challenge.

The Elis led 22-19 and had the ball at their own 24. They also had super RB Tyler Varga, who had already torched CU for 196 yards on 21 carries and three TD’s.

All Yale needed to do was let Varga carry the ball for a few first downs and the game would be over.

And that’s exactly what the Elis did… except they forgot not to turn the ball over.

Five plays and two first downs later, Varga was now over the 200 yard mark and facing a 1^st and 10 from his own 46 with about 2:15 left to go.

Varga took the ball again on that play and moved ahead for nine more yards before Columbia LB Mike Waller managed to strip the ball from him just before his knee hit the turf.

Fellow LB Ryan Murphy pounced on the ball at the CU 41 and, after the refs talked it over for a while, the Lions had the ball back after a stunner of a turnaround play.

Columbia now had two minutes and five seconds to cash in on what was CU’s biggest defensive play of 2012.