Few things.
First, the James Johnson play against Duke is probably the most overrated "genius" coaching call in Wake history. We set up 4 wide down low to try to get Teague free, Duke had 3 guys around Johnson and they all fell asleep as he took a single step to the basket, game over. Just a horrible defensive lapse that had basically nothing to do with the play call for Teague to get the ball on the wing.
Second, considering Duke's pressure, keeping a timeout to bail out a well-defended inbounds play is pretty reasonable. A lot of coaches would do that if they felt they had a play ready for the situation.
Third, the play itself was completely reasonable. High low set, Hoard was playing like garbage so we clear him (and Barrett) out for the inbounds to our biggest and most useless player, Okeke. Okeke hands it off and is supposed to pick Brandon's man so we have the ball back in our PG's hands with 5 seconds plus some mismatches. All that works perfectly. Okeke takes Chill's man completely out of the play on his pick and Reddish has now has to defend both Brown and Chill. This is pretty much exactly the scenario you want a designed play to deliver - a switch you dictated and a single player having to defend your two top scorers of the game.
Then Childress pulls up for a horrible 3, Reddish recovers while he's in the air and he has to fire the double-clutch garbage losing airball. It actually would have been more painful had Chaundee's put-back gone in, only to have it reversed on replay...
The part of the play that didn't work was that Chaundee was supposed to screen Reddish after giving it back to Chill, but that's fine. Watch it again - instead of picking air like Chaundee does and then wandering to the top of the key where Duke's defender is off-screen running back to, that's a dive to the basket and a game winning dunk against nobody.
And that's the story of this season. The players either aren't prepared, aren't performing, are too limited to be effective (Okeke, Smart, Johnson, Wynn), or make bad decisions. All that is Manning's responsibility and he'll get fired for it in a matter of days. We've had bouts of decent basketball in the back half of this season, but that's all it's been. Manning's gift seems to be wrenching defeat from the jaws of victory. Call the right play, execution fails. Recruit some quality players, can't convince them to stay in the program. Beat Louisville to make it to the brink of a real tourney appearance? Lose to a VaTech team you beat 4 days earlier and end up in a play-in.