Mark Mugiishi is a surgeon, so it’s probably a good thing his work duties Thursday were outside of the operating room.

He concedes to being not 100 percent focused at meetings, glancing often at his tablet to view Northwestern’s historic NCAA Tournament basketball win over Vanderbilt.

“I went there during the ultimate futility in athletics,” Mugiishi said. “Three seasons without a win in football. So it’s an amazing feeling, and it’s super exciting for me because it’s my school.”

Since Mugiishi was the basketball head coach at ‘Iolani for seven state championships in 20 seasons, he’s also the right person to ask about what makes this NU team good enough to be the first to make it to the dance.

“They play spectacular defense. When I coached, I believed that if you stay around in the game by playing tough defense, keeping the other team out of rhythm, you always have a chance,” he said. “The second thing is they have an unbelievable point guard (Bryant McIntosh).”

I never met Mugiishi at NU, but was there two of his six years; I was at the Evanston campus and he was already at the medical school in Chicago. But we were at the same basketball games, the ones at drafty McGaw Hall, where the ‘Cats would regularly get clawed by the rest of the Big Ten.

Every other team in the conference was loaded. There was Isiah Thomas (the elder, not Isaiah, the younger) who played at Indiana for Bobby Knight. Kevin McHale, Minnesota. Clark Kellogg and Herb Williams at Ohio State. At Illinois, there was Eddie A. Johnson, who led the Illini to the Rainbow Classic championship in 1979, and later went on to score 19,202 points as one of the most underrated players in NBA history.

“I guess it’s like being the fan of a bad NBA team — you just want to see Steph Curry and LeBron James when they come to town,” said Andy Yamaguchi, who was a sportswriter at the Daily Northwestern before becoming one at the Honolulu Advertiser. “I got to see Magic Johnson throwing crazy, no-look passes to Greg Kelser. I can picture it like it was yesterday.”

Yamaguchi remembers how the temperature at McGaw was as cold as the Wildcats’ shooting on many winter nights, and other aspects of the rustic facility.

“It was a dirt floor, with a roof, with a basketball court 31⁄2 feet off the ground. There wasn’t a lot of sideline, and if you weren’t careful you could fall off the edge of the world.”

I can verify it was a dump; it made the Stan Sheriff Center look like the Forum. It was refurbished in 1983, and what has been renamed Welsh-Ryan Arena is undergoing a $110 million renovation.

A friend from NU days, Tom Watson, says winning sports teams is a bonus.

“It took some commitment from the school administration to spend some money on better coaches and better facilities, but they didn’t sacrifice academic standards,” he said.

Chicago is a basketball hotbed. So why did it take so long for Northwestern to make it to the tourney? Similar to University of Hawaii football, it has long had challenges keeping the best talent home. Thomas and Johnson are the examples I remember best.

“If you grew up in Chicago your dream school was Notre Dame,” Yamaguchi said. “Northwestern was five, or six. Or zero, if you couldn’t get in.”

Mugiishi said being from Hawaii helped in accepting underdog sports status.

“Besides cheering for the underdog, the concept of ohana we have in Hawaii infuses the values we have,” he said. “We appreciate teams where they click not because of overwhelming talent, but because everyone’s doing their part.”

But it can be easier to detach yourself from a small private school losing, even if you’re an alumnus, than your home state’s university doing so.

“A lot of people who go to UH games are from here and grew up with it,” Yamaguchi said. “People come from far away (to NU) and they don’t always have that deep a tie to watching a Northwestern team. If the team does poorly, they don’t feel like it’s a reflection on them.”

No one enjoys being known for losing, or what they perceive as an unfair playing field. But, as Hawaii fans were reminded in last year’s tournament, waiting for winning makes it all the sweeter.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. Click here to read his blog.