It's not about if storylines could be done in a different way or better or not.... Maya is the first of the central group of MC's friends he meets on campus, she gives you a tour on campus, introduces you to the Jocks, the Diks, the Preps and the HOTs.
Her part in the story is connecting the dots.... This really gives her no special role as being canon LI or whatever...
It's just the character used to connect the main story events, other storylines get hooked into it the further we go into the story.
As for Maya's connection to the Burke scam and the restaurant... Nothing changed in ep 9, Maya still needs tuition, Quinn still wants to expand the restaurant, we see Burke calling a certain Priscilla that most likely is Quinn's given name...
Sure now there's Jill's lawyer that might be Maya's salvation.... But no, that's gonna be a dead end too.... Just like we knew Burke was not going to give her that scholarship this episode...
The game starts with: family is a group of people whether connected by blood or not, that accept you for you and stand by you whatever your choices are.... It's about the story of MC and the people close to him, the ones he fights for and who fight for him.... This group of people are Maya, Josy, Jill, Sage, Bella, but also the DIks.... And Zoey is likely to be one aswell...
It's with these characters we will follow the main storylines.... This game is the story of MC and his friends or "family"...
the first impression is that, and I absolutely believe that Maya and Jill are the 'chosen ones'.
but then thinking about it a few weeks ago the driving character of almost all MC's events is Sage, and not Maya, and incredibly it all starts from a single 'random' action
1) if Sage didn't stop at MC's table in the cafeteria Chad wouldn't intervene and later on he wouldn't agress MC, indirectly introducing him to Jill (who would be at this point completely cut out of the story as we know it).
2) With Jill cut, Bella's role would also be greatly reduced, basically the only interaction would be to give him clothes to stop him from walking around naked.
2) without the confrontation with Chad, the Jocks wouldn't steal MC's guitar and this in turn would block all the way with Sage
4) and once MC isn't robbed, he probably wouldn't try to be a DIK and wouldn't share a room with Maya, distancing his involvement in her debt
5) at that point the only LI he would have a connection with would be Josy
but beyond this series of actions and reactions, Sage is just as central as Maya in the general story, the restaurant, the voice of free tuition, are all aspects that involve Sage anyway, who sooner or later will have to become an active subject of these events.