Jason Pearce scored the winning goal on his debut for the club with the Latics enduring a tortuous eleven minutes of stoppage time at the end of the game.
The only black mark on the evening was the injury to Chris Herd which looks set to rule the Aston Villa loanee out for the remainder of the season.
Speaking about the game to the Latics offical website Mackay said: “It was a real battling performance and we deservedly won the game. I thought we came here and handled Reading in a good fashion because they’re a good team and they’ve got a lot of experienced players.
“At the end, they threw Pavel Pogrebnyak and Yakubu up top and had five or six forays up the pitch and I thought we withstood it well as Ali Al Habsi didn’t have that much to do towards the end and we probably should have killed it off at the other end.
“I’m delighted with the performance overall and it’s what I’ve seen from this new group, barring the Nottingham Forest game, over the last four weeks.”
The trick for the Latics now is to repeat the victory in their upcoming games against Charlton, Cardiff, and Blackpool, who are all teams in and around the relegation zone.