I'm not a Maya user but I've been using Rhino for a while, for your problem, the only thing that I can say is to make sure you join all those edges and surface in Rhino b4 you import it to Maya, otherwise it would be a small nightmare.
I've check the tutorial for Maya, its more or less the same as Rhino, you can try it. Nurbs modelling from various software were very much the same, except Max.