John Egan headed the Blades ahead from a corner inside eight minutes for their 11th set-piece goal in the Championship this term before Billy Sharp doubled the lead 11 minutes after the restart.
However, Wigan halved the deficit just after the hour mark through Nathan Broadhead – with replays showing he had come from an offside position. In Kolo Toure’s first home game in charge at Wigan, the Blades held on to restore their five-point cushion to third place.
Heckingbotttom said: “We prepared for a tough game against a side with a new manager. We started really well in terms of our energy, we forced a hell of a lot of errors and should have been further in front at half-time.
“We had to work hard again in the second half, we had to dig deep, and I thought we earned the 2-0 lead. I expected us to go on then, I thought we’d done all the hard work.
“Listen, I know they showed on the big screen the replay of their goal, and it was offside, so I won’t dig the linesman out. What disappointed me more was how the ball got there, because we had two opportunities to clear the ball in the middle of the pitch and we didn’t.
“When you’ve worked so hard to get yourself in that lead, in that position, for that bit of poor judgement from us to let them back in, all of a sudden it’s 2-1. You know that you’ve got to weather the storm now, with all the attacking substitutions, more balls forward, trying to play in behind us. We had to stand strong in the end.”
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Heckingbotttom said: “We prepared for a tough game against a side with a new manager. We started really well in terms of our energy, we forced a hell of a lot of errors and should have been further in front at half-time.